Ingest Software: PC file directory sorting by date question & general advice.

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DsD

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Okay, first off, the Z9 has called me out shooting at 20 fps. I have been sloppy/lax at photo management duties. In the D-750 days I was a deliberate, controlled shooter with little need to look over hundreds of photos at day's end. Those days are over now with the Z9, while still trying to be disciplined.

So, I'm looking at ingest software and need good counsel (that's you folk). I searched the forum for ingest/culling threads and found a couple. Seems most here like PM, FRV and FastStone. I downloaded FastStone and have already run into a snag based on what I THINK I want to do. Likely out of ignorance in understanding basic database manipulation etc. I don't see how I can sort the files by year only, in FastStone. Plus, the only documentation/manual I can find on FastStone goes back to 2011. Perhaps the other ingest programs will do this.

I need to start from scratch and go back through my picture file folders (reorganizing them also) and thin the herd, quickly. Which of these ingest programs will let me open a folder and then SORT by date shot, allowing me to drill down by YEAR first and then month and day? Thus, I can then select those pictures and save to a newly created sub-folder by year or year and month accordingly. From there I can take my first pass at culling out the junk and then a second pass entering all the meta-data wanted and tagging.

By the way, I am truly an amateur photographer (albeit for over 40 years), but ... I have an annoying habit of getting way to far into the weeds prior to purchasing "stuff". I want to try adhering to the KISS principle here, if possible.

Hope the above makes sense, as I am a terrible communicator. I appreciate your time reading this and for sage comments.
 
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I know a lot of people hate LR because of the subscription model but I could not live without the photo management aspects of it. I have 100's of thousands of photos in my library and I can quickly find anything I want based on any meta data or tag that I gave it. IMO it is worth it even if you don't use the photo editing aspect (although for me it's good enough now I don't even touch PS unless it's for something very specific).
 
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if your dated folders are YYYYMMDD then they will sort correctly eg 20221117 (Nov 17.2022)

can you write BASIC code or script? the idea - though this wouldn't work as is
For Each nFileOld in OldFolder
nFileNew copy from nFileOld
rename nFileNew nFileOld.Date.Format("YYYYMMDD")
save nFileNew, NewFolder
Next

something along those lines.
 
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You might give XnViewMP a try for your ingest software, it is free and does everything you have asked for and more.
I use it almost exclusively as it does everything I need with relation to my photos.
 
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I don't use or have any experience with LR, so that's out @Palmor. I develop in DxO PL #5.

I also don't know/have any coding skills @Patrick M . I want to sort the pictures (lumped in one large folder) so I can place them in year based file folders; said folders are not set up yet.
 
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soundbyte said:
You might give XnViewMP a try for your ingest software, it is free and does everything you have asked for and more.
I use it almost exclusively as it does everything I need with relation to my photos.
Click to expand...
Thanks @soundbyte. So you are saying that I can use said program and open my picture folder directory (Pictures>Raw>D-750) and sort all those photos in D-750 folder by year and then extract all by year and place in a new folder, i.e. 2019, 2021, 2022?
 
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I know I could do so, yes.

Suggest that you first decide how you want your files sorted , make the folder structure, then do your sorting.

XnViewMP - Open Folder with files that need sorting, sort by date, highlight all files in one year, or by month etc, then use ALT+M to move selected files to another folder of choice.
Proceed in the same manner until you have sorted all the files.

This could also be done within Windows explorer, similar process.
 
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Okay @soundbyte, thank you. BUT that is what I was trying to avoid ... manually selecting photos in a date range! I was hoping one of the software programs was smart enough to do that for me, if for example I say I only want pictures taken in 2022 (a subset of the date data in the photo(s). May have to resort to brute force. I believe you didn't understand what I want the software to do. Granted, this would mostly be a one time operation for a bucket of photos taken over the past several years. Once I have a folder hierarchy established it should not be a problem going forward.
 
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DsD said:
Okay @soundbyte, thank you. BUT that is what I was trying to avoid ... manually selecting photos in a date range! I was hoping one of the software programs was smart enough to do that for me, if for example I say I only want pictures taken in 2022 (a subset of the date data in the photo(s). May have to resort to brute force. I believe you didn't understand what I want the software to do. Granted, this would mostly be a one time operation for a bucket of photos taken over the past several years. Once I have a folder hierarchy established it should not be a problem going forward.
Click to expand...
I know you said LR isn't an option but I believe they have a trial if you want to do this as a one time thing. It will move all your photos to the dir structure that you are looking for than you can delete the trial.
 
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XnViewMP also has an import and sort function that can import by date.
2022-11-17 20_16_18 - XnView MP.jpg
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
 
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Ah, interesting as under the subfolder the year only is greyed out. I presume if so selected it will only grab a certain year. Thaks for posting that screen shot. Guess I need to consider XnViewMP.
 
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@soundbyte, thanks to you I got it sorted ... literally! Your above screen shot got me to looking at FastStone's import feature and it appears to do exactly the same thing as XnViewMP. I extracted from origin file folder and then saved back to same as a destination and the software created my new subfolders by year and month.

Kudos to you Sir! And why this forum group is great.
 
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DsD said:
I downloaded FastStone and have already run into a snag based on what I THINK I want to do. Likely out of ignorance in understanding basic database manipulation etc. I don't see how I can sort the files by year only, in FastStone.
Click to expand...

I've been using Faststone for years, but I think I oganise my folders differently to you. I use year folder and sub folders titled places or shoot names and just flick thought the folders. Some folders have their own sub folders.
 
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If you are using a PC, File Explorer will sort the items (photos, documents, etc) by type and then by date. You simply Select Details under the View option. If there are only photos in the folder, then you can drag the date field to be the first column. Then you can select/highlight the photos taken in a given year - cut them and then paste them into a new folder.
 
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