• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

Removing and reimporting photos to solve YYMMDD vs YYYYMMDD folder problem

Status
Not open for further replies.

Nancy Everds

Member
Premium Classic Member
Premium Cloud Member
Joined
Oct 9, 2021
Messages
62
Location
Seattle, WA
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
11.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
Hi--
Happy holidays, everyone!
I used to use Downloader Pro/Breezebrowser Pro for organizing images, and have recently switched to LRC. My DLPro/BBPro workflow was to import into YYMMDD file folders inside a year folder called __YYDDLPro. I maintained that file structure when I brought those images in LRC.

There were a number of images that were not in the DLPro/BBPro folder structure. I imported these images into folders by date, but those files are in folders called YYYYMMDD. Thus, for photos from the ides of March in 2005, I have a folder called __05DLPro with subfolders called, for example, 050315, and another folder for 2005 called 2005 with subfolders called 20050315.

To rectify this, I have been moving all files for a given date into a single folder (the 20050315 one, for example). I have been doing this refiling manually (drag/drop ad nauseum) and it's taking forever, but just realized that there may be a simpler way. Would this work:
1. Remove a year folder from the old org system (DLPro/BBPro) using right-click and Remove.
2. Reimport via LR including images in all subfolders, and tell LR to sort by date so that each image would go into a YYYYMMDD folder (eg 20040315).
Will this work? Will I lose any keywords that I've added?
Thanks!
Nancy
 
DO NOT RE-IMPORT.
DO NOT RE-IMPORT.
DO NOT RE-IMPORT. You will lose your work done in LrC. (and advice to Write XMP to files can conserve only minimal data)
In the LrC Folder panel- IMO It would be best initially to drag Folders (not individual photos) into the new YYYY structure, and you can do this by selecting multiple folders to drag many with one action.
Then you can (as time goes by) rename folders to keep the sorting in proper order.
Organize and Manage Your Photos and Folders (Laura Shoe)
 
Thanks for your response. At this point, all I've done is import these photos into LRC. I haven't done any editing in LRC. If that is true, is there any harm?
 
OK- no harm. Without having done editing then Re-importing the photos will be your easier path.
But before you do, (if there has been any keywording done!) -
Select photos,
Clear all filters to "none" [Ctrl+L],
Save Metadata to files [Ctrl+S] (Keywords?)
Then [Remove] photos from the Catalog. (Do NOT 'Delete' from disk! )
Now Re-import with your changed 'Date' folder format.
You could use the [MOVE] option in the Import but it might be safer to use the [COPY] option setting the Destination to a new 'Parent' folder for all folders and images, and delete the 'old' folders later (you might need extra free hard-drive space).
Season's Greetings.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top