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Lorie Zweifel
Lorie Zweifel
Inspiring
August 13, 2019
Question

Organizing Photos from multiple sources into one folder by date

  • August 13, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 695 views

Hello and thank you in advance for any support you may be able to provide.

I have a box, and I mean a box, of USB sticks with photos, some are from iPhone, some from cameras, etc.  I would like to upload them all into Lightroom CC Classic and sort them by date.  I do not need to adjust anything or change the names, however many have the same name, in which case the number 2 behind that duplicate would serve me fine.

My soul accomplishment here would be to have all the bazillion photos successfully loaded into Lightroom, sorted by date and renamed with that date and then to an external hard drive where I can return them to their owner.

Please help, I have spent days sorting and sifting only for things not to turn out as anticipated.  One problem I run into is that once I remove the USB stick I lose the photos, they need to become apart of Lightroom until I am finished, is that possible.  Maybe I have to upload them to Lightroom, sort, and re-name by date and then place in a different folder and keep adding to that folder, then put back into Lightroom to do a final sort, then rename by the date and put into the external.

Thanks for any advice I would really appreciate it!

Lorie

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    1 reply

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    August 13, 2019

    You can Import the photos into Lightroom, storing them on one of your hard disks, and you can choose the import option that creates folders by capture date. You can also re-name the photos during the import operation if you wish so that part of the file name is the capture date.

    If I am understanding you properly, there's no need (and it wouldn't work anyway) to keep the photos on the USB sticks, they need to be on a hard disk somwhere when you import them into Lightroom.

    Lorie Zweifel
    Lorie ZweifelAuthor
    Inspiring
    August 13, 2019

    Thank you for your help dj,

    What you are suggesting is to take the photos from the USB sticks and import them to a folder on my computer, re-naming them with their date as I go....  once all are in that folder import back into Lightroom, sort and then export them to the external drive where they will stay.

    Yes?

    I think that is where I failed....  I was trying to import them all into Lightroom to sort and then re-name, but when I removed the USB I lost some (not all, but some of the photos).  Because there are so many it is a long tedious job only to find I was loosing photos along the way, haha...  but not so funny!

    dj_paige
    dj_paige
    Legend
    August 13, 2019

    https://forums.adobe.com/people/Lorie+Zweifel  wrote

    Thank you for your help dj,

    What you are suggesting is to take the photos from the USB sticks and import them to a folder on my computer, re-naming them with their date as I go....  once all are in that folder import back into Lightroom, sort and then export them to the external drive where they will stay.

    Yes?

    No

    There is no difference between importing to the external hard disk, and importing into Lightroom. This same Import creates folders by capture date and can optionally rename the photos as well. It's one step, all these things are done entirely in Lightroom, by setting the proper import options. Don't try to make it multiple steps, that's completely unnecessary. Don't first import to the internal hard disk in your computer and later put them on the external.

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