A few days ago, if you remember, I happened to be looking through folders on my hard drive. Among other things, thousands of photographs were unexpectedly discovered: from cameras, mobile phones, copied from other people, and so on. It was necessary to sort them by year of shooting, month and day.
Great for sorting files Total Commander, It’s not for nothing that such programs are called “file managers” (if you want, I can tell you and show how easily they do this). But since there were very, very many photographs, I soon went to the Internet in search of a program that would sort everything out for me automatically. And, of course, I found it - a tiny but very useful utility SSort 1.0.
SSort is a program for sorting files. Sorting is done by creation date, modification date, or extension.
How it works
For example, several folders with random photos were specially created.
We launch the program and in the main window, on the “Search” tab, select the folders that may contain the necessary photos, the file type (as a rule, photos are saved in JPG format) and click “Search”. The sorter scans folders and shows a complete list of detected images.
Go to the “Sorting” tab: select the path where the sorted photos will be saved, indicate the sorting principle (by dates of modification or creation, by extension), set whether to copy the images or move them completely to a new location (it will be impossible to roll back!) and set folder structure (whether to include the “Month” and “Date” subfolders). Click "Sort".
After some time, we go to the directory specified for saving and see: the photographs are arranged in folders by year.
Months and dates.
And in each folder there are photographs taken on a certain day (see note). That's what needed to be done.
P.S. There are a lot of good programs out there, from Picasa to camera-specific apps that, among other things, also sort photos into folders, but I needed a simple program that does just that.
Notes
* A couple of photographs turned out to be “taken” in 2012. Apparently the camera clock was set incorrectly. To change the creation date of a file, I can offer you another simple program, FileTime. The program allows you to very simply and conveniently change the time of creating/opening/changing a file. Simply select the desired file and enter the desired values.
Almost every person using a digital camera, Thousands, and maybe tens of thousands of different photographs have accumulated on the computer. Everyone stores this huge archive differently. Some people have many different folders in one directory with names or dates corresponding to photographs, while others have them all stored on different drives, network storages, in different folders and, quite possibly, some have long been forgotten in some some folder named “New Folder” :)
Of course, when several years of photographs are scattered all over your computer, the mere thought of organizing and searching for them causes negative feelings. But not everything is as bad as it seems at first glance :) Regardless of how you store your photos - The Google Picasa program will help you cope with all this archive. I will try to describe in detail the process of organizing your home photo archive using Google Picasa.
In just one hour you can achieve impressive results:
- Find all the photos on your computer, even those you forgot about.
- Organize them and learn how to quickly find the photos you need!
Automatic search for all photos.
Let's start from the first point. As I already wrote, to manage my home photo archive I use the very convenient Google Picasa program. It is a free and very powerful photo manager. You can download it on the official page: //picasa.google.ru/. Installing the program goes smoothly and calmly: we run the installation file and agree with everything that we are asked to do.
Before you start working with Google Picasa, remember two very important and useful things:
Picasa does not store photos on your computer: When you open Picasa, it simply searches folders on your computer and displays the photos it finds. It displays files of specified types located in the folders selected for search. The original photos are always saved: When using Picasa's editing tools, the original files remain intact. Changes you make to a photo are only viewable in Picasa until you decide to save them. Even then, Picasa creates a new version of the photo with the changes made, while keeping the original file unchanged.So, when Google Picasa is installed, launch it. If all the photos on your computer are located in different folders or on different drives, then I recommend waiting for it to automatically search for photos on your computer.
For example, all my photos are stored in one folder, so after launching I immediately indicated the folder with which the program should work. If you have the same situation, I recommend that you immediately go to the menu Tools -> Folder Manager and check the boxes only on those folders in which photos are stored.
If you have photos scattered all over your computer, then you can do nothing but simply watch as Picasa finds all your photos and images.
When the program performs a full scan of your computer, on the left side you will see many folders in which images and photographs were found. Initially, Picasa finds absolutely all images on your computer.
We sort and organize photos into collections.
You need to clear this list yourself. To clear the list of photo folders:
Finally, when the list of folders is cleared of all unnecessary things, you can combine the remaining directories into Collections. For example, in my archive I found several different folders from my vacation in 2012:
In this form, the names of these folders are not very informative for me personally. So I combined them into one collection. For this:
Now all you have to do is view the entire list of folders and organize them into your collections.
I have accumulated a huge number of photos from smartphones. I have to change smartphones often, because for each review I always use a new smartphone as my main phone in order to identify all the features and nuances.
I finally found a way to rename and organize tens of thousands of photos.
Different smartphones name photos according to different principles - some take into account the date and time of shooting, others simply call them DSC_0001, DSC_0002, etc.
At first I wanted to simply rename the files according to their date, but it turned out that sometimes when transferred to a computer, the date is lost and replaced with the current one.
Fortunately, JPG files contain EXIF - a block of information with shooting parameters, which contains, in particular, the date and time of shooting.
The task boiled down to the fact that you need to rename all photo files so that the name contains the date and time of shooting from EXIF, and at the same time change the date of all files, restoring the shooting date. There was a program on the Internet that can do this: Exifer - http://www.exifer.friedemann.info/index.htm#Download.
It's simple: Select the desired folder, select all the files (Edit - Select All or Ctrl+A), go to rename (Edit - Rename/redate and copy or Ctrl+N), check the box "Redate (by EXIF date fields)" and start the process with the OK button.
All selected files in the folder will be renamed and their date/time will accurately reflect the shooting date and time. For some reason, with a large number of files, the program cannot process several files, as reported. But it doesn’t matter - it’s enough to re-run the conversion for these files.
This can also be automated: the exiftool program http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/, which works on the command line, can organize all photos into folders by year, month and day of shooting.
exiftool "-Directory" command exiftool "-Directory" command Renaming all photos according to the date and time they were taken and organizing them into date folders will turn a huge photo trash bin into a convenient archive. Try it! It takes very little time. 2016, Alexey Nadezhin The main topic of my blog is technology in human life. I write reviews, share my experiences, talk about all sorts of interesting things. I also make reports from interesting places and talk about interesting events. Tools for organization are available in almost every image program. You can often find programs that are simultaneously viewers, editors, and cataloguers. These are, for example, Zoner Photo Studio, ACDSee, Nero Kwik Media and many others. There is no doubt that all-in-one tools are convenient for many users. But if, among their many capabilities, the main ones for you are those related to organizing photos, you may want to take a closer look at specialized programs. Firstly, such applications are not overloaded with unnecessary options - and therefore, in most cases, they work faster and more stable than multimedia processors. Secondly, specialized programs usually offer more tools for searching photos based on different criteria. Read our review about five apps that make organizing your photo collection easier. Under its current name, the Daminion cataloger has been in development for more than five years, but its creators have much more experience in writing applications for organizing photographs. Previously, Daminion developers released the PicaJet program, but later decided to write a completely new application with multi-user access to the photo database and other interesting features. At the same time, a single-user version of Daminion is also available, which is distributed free of charge. The multi-user version is called Daminion Server. Daminion works with catalogs - databases of photographs, and adding files to the catalog is the user's responsibility. This means that you need to manually specify the path to the folders with the images. In this case, files can be physically copied or transferred to the folder that is used to store data, or they can simply be added to the directory without copying. At the same time, Daminion remembers relative paths to files, so when you transfer photos to another drive, all data in the directory will be preserved. When adding photos to the catalog, you can immediately assign tags to them, or you can do this later - everything is at the discretion of the user. As soon as the files are added to the directory, they are displayed in the program window in the form of thumbnails with captions. In the signature you can see basic information about the file: name, resolution, size, shutter speed, ISO. In addition, each thumbnail contains tools for organization: you can quickly set a rating, tag the image, add keywords, set a color tag, and view detailed metadata. The user can change the way files are displayed, displaying only images without additional information, or, conversely, removing thumbnails and calling up a list of files with information about them. If you select an image, you can see more information about it in the Properties panel. There is also an opportunity to supplement this information: indicate the people who are depicted in it, the event during which the photograph was taken, the location where it was taken, the category. For professional photographers, fields such as “Project”, “Client”, “Copyright” are provided. You can also fill in the fields in the “Properties” panel in batch mode - to do this, you just need to first select the necessary photos. All changes to tags are synchronized with file metadata, so information about files is always presented both in the database and in the files themselves. If the right panel is informational and at the same time serves for data entry, then the left panel - “Tags” - is intended for search. All file search criteria are at your fingertips. For example, you can display only pictures located in the same folder, expand the “Creation Date” list and quickly find a photo by the month it was taken, display only files with the maximum rating, and so on. It is very important that, in addition to custom tools for organization, the program also offers many automatic ones. For example, it is very easy to select geo-tagged images taken with a specific camera using a specific lens. There is nothing difficult in using several conditions at once. The program also has an advanced search that allows you to use up to fifty parameters, including operators AND, OR and others. There are no tools for editing images in Daminion; you can only rotate the thumbnails for easier viewing. If any changes were made by mistake, you can always roll back to the previous version - the program keeps track of revisions. This is especially true when working with a multi-user application. Daminion works not only with graphic files, but also with videos and PDF documents. At the same time, the program is optimized for working with very large collections of images (the test database consists of 500 thousand images), so you don’t have to worry about the stability of its work when adding new files. By the way, for convenience, you can use several independent directories that can be opened in the program simultaneously, each on a separate tab. Despite the fact that the latest version of IMatch dates back to the end of last year, when looking at the program's interface, it seems that it is many years old. Indeed, appearance has always been IMatch’s weak point, and against the background of modern interface solutions, small buttons with Windows 2000-style graphics look scary. The author has long promised to redesign the appearance of the application, but has not done so yet. However, many users still prefer this program. The main reason is the support for scripts, thanks to which you can connect to the program almost any function that is not implemented in it by default. For example, there are scripts for managing file versions, for finding files that have been tagged incorrectly, for checking the correctness of names, and others. Scripts do not have to be created manually - many useful additions have already been written by other users of the program and are available on the forum. Another important feature of IMatch is its stable work with large collections of files. The program easily copes with databases containing hundreds of thousands of photos, does not slow down and works quite stably. In addition, IMatch provides a periodic reminder to create a backup copy. Like Daminion, this program works with photo databases that must be manually populated with photographic content. The processes of creating a database and importing images are implemented in the form of a wizard, but despite this, it is difficult to call them intuitive. There are too many boxes to check along the way. By default, in the program window the database is sorted into folders. It is also possible to view by category, by saved search templates, by the history of selected files, and so on. MyPhotoIndex is inferior in functionality to its more advanced competitors, but the program has several important advantages. Firstly, the program is free and open source. Secondly, it is very simple, and the user does not need to rack his brain for a long time about where to find this or another option - they are all at hand. The program offers organization of photos by categories, by tags and by rating. Tags can be added to the slice when importing images into the program database, and several tags that are used most often are already added by default. Access to all main functions is provided through the context menu. With it, you can add and remove tags, add and edit comments, change the date the photo was taken, send photos for printing, encrypt them, and set them as wallpaper on your desktop. Separately, it is worth noting the data sharing capabilities: with one click, photos can be uploaded to Facebook, Flickr and other services. Using built-in search tools, the user can search for photos by tags, by title and other criteria. A convenient function is to search for images that were taken between two specified dates. Of course, it’s very good when you have the time and desire to keep your photo collection in perfect order: set ratings, sort pictures by category and add tags. But, unfortunately, even a simple sorting of hundreds of photographs into folders takes months for some. Thanks to large memory cards, we don't have to worry about running out of space and often copy photos to our computer once every two months. And then all the events recorded during this time end up in one pile. Photo Event Organizer is a simple program that helps you easily sort your running photo archives by date. Specify the directory in which all photographs are stored, and also set the time period that determines the duration of one event. After this, the program will show you what period of time the photos will go into each folder, and will offer to give a name to each event during which they were taken. If you wish, you can simply sort photos by month or year. Once the operation is complete, you will see new folders with neat names like “October” and “November”. Photo Event Organizer can both copy photos to new folders and move them, which is, of course, faster. If duplicates are found during the copying process, they will not be transferred to the new folder. Thus, the program can also help free up some space on your hard drive. And finally, another simple free utility that helps you organize your photos by adding information about the time they were taken to the file names. The information is taken from the metadata written to the file at the time of its creation. Once you get files with names like 2013-04-01-17h56m56.jpg, they become a little easier to navigate. Namexif works in the form of a wizard: the user is first asked to specify files or folders. Since the program can look into subfolders, you can immediately select the root directory, and then Namexif will find and rename all photos at once. At the second stage, you need to select a renaming format. For example, an application can leave the original name at the end or add arbitrary characters to all names. Unfortunately, there is no function for previewing changes, as well as a rollback, so it is better to practice on small folders first. Requirements for image organizing programs may vary, but the end goal for the user is always the same - the ability to quickly find the photo they need. Each of the programs discussed above helps with this in its own way, so all you have to do is choose the one that best suits you. Do not forget that photos that you cannot find are as useless as they were deleted long ago. Free programs for photo collection | Picasa
Picasa, a popular tool from Google, is a convenient free program that will suit the needs of most users. We have a wide range of tools for organizing photo collections and basic image processing tools. The user has the option to sort photos into folders on the computer or create virtual albums to distribute photos within Picasa. A set of tags and geotags allows you to distribute images by the place where they were taken, or by the names of the people depicted on them. Basic editing tools include cropping, scaling, rotating, and red-eye reduction—everything you need to clean up your photos. You can apply different filters and indulge in other fun tricks. Free programs for photo collection | Zoner Photo Studio Free
This program is probably not as organized for organization as Picasa, but at the same time Zoner Photo Studio Free will appeal to those who like to edit photos. This is not just a tool for putting things in order in the archive - it is a full-fledged set of numerous tools for photo editing. The set includes a wide range of retouching and editing tools, quick filters and much more. Zoner Photo Studio includes all the necessary tools for creating a variety of photo projects - from panoramas to calendars. Free programs for photo collection | StudioLine Photo Basic 3
StudioLine Photo Basic 3 allows you to sort your photo collection and slightly edit your photos. Photo enhancements include cropping, rotating, scaling, and red-eye correction, among others. From an organization point of view, Photo Basic 3 allows the user to apply tags and geotags, as well as descriptions to images located in a directory, which can be organized into folders. Slideshow and online gallery tools make it easy to publish or share your photos with others. Free programs for photo collection | JetPhoto Studio 5
JetPhoto Studio 5 offers most of the photo editing and storage tools users need: organizing an album, using tags and geotags, but the main advantage of the solution is its advanced photo publishing capabilities. Numerous options include the ability to publish images to Flickr and your own JetPhoto Server, as well as creating a Google Map gallery of geotagged photos. You can even quickly create Flash galleries and slideshows for web design projects, and view images through Flash player and browser. Free programs for photo collection | XnViewMP
XnViewMP is a free tool for quickly viewing images that supports over 500 formats. With its help, you can sort common .jpg or .png files, as well as explore rare formats. XnViewMP is perfect for such tasks. It won't auto-sort files quickly (like Picasa), but XnViewMP does have editing tools for changing image metadata and tags in batch mode to quickly apply tags to entire arrays of images. Free programs for photo collection | FastStone Image Viewer
FastStone Image Viewer– a convenient image viewing tool with functions for editing and organizing photos. FastStone has a wide range of basic image processing tools, supports label creation, EXIF data viewing, and other annotation and sorting capabilities. Despite the fact that FastStone does not have the ability to upload photos to social networks or cloud storage, it is an excellent tool for viewing, editing and organizing a photo archive if you store it on one computer. Free programs for photo collection | MAGIX Photo Manager 12
MAGIX Photo Manager 12 is the latest version of the MAGIX Photo Manager software line, combining many functions for organizing, editing and publishing images. Using organization tools, you can categorize pictures and sort them by file name, creation date, or topic tags. MAGIX includes a number of image editing functions. The free version does not support functions such as editing panoramas and automatically sorting images, but, in general, MAGIX Photo Manager 12 copes well with its tasks. Free programs for photo collection | Phototheca
Phototheca is a free photo organization tool that bypasses complex editing features and instead focuses on getting your photo collection in order. By importing photos into the Phototheca database, they can be automatically sorted by events (for example, if the photos were taken on the same day or are stored in the same folder), placing them on a timeline. You can then tag your images, assign them to other events, or sort them into your own albums. In addition, the Smart Album feature allows you to create dynamically updated collections based on selected criteria, such as camera type, creation date or tag. Free programs for photo collection | DigiKam
DigiKam is an open platform for organizing photos, ported to Windows and offering a wide range of functionality. Collections of images can be sorted into folders, albums, tags; Thus, DigiKam is a fairly flexible tool that takes into account your preferences when organizing a photo collection. Metadata, including comments, ratings, and other criteria, can be viewed, edited, and stored in an SQLite database or used in files. Support for tables and RAW format greatly simplifies the process of comparing photos, and additional features available as plugins significantly expand the functionality of this tool. Among the disadvantages of the solution is that this application is still in development and cannot boast of stable operation on Windows.
Add me to your friend list⇡ Daminion 1.0 RC
⇡ IMatch 3.6
⇡ MyPhotoIndex 1.24
⇡ Photo Event Organizer 1.3
⇡ Namexif 1.6
⇡ Conclusion
