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jillniss
Participating Frequently
January 12, 2017
Question

Elements Organizer - Photo Downloader renamed and organized files incorrectly PE14

  • January 12, 2017
  • 1 reply
  • 1814 views

I just used Elements to import photos from my iPhone for the first time (previously I used the windows dialog to open folders to view files, and copied photos to my hard drive).

I chose to Create Subfolders using the Shot Date, and to Rename Files using the format yyyymmdd_iPhone_0001,JPG

I had 945 photos saved, so it took a long time to complete the upload, but I figured this is gonna be worth it because for the first time I will be organized!

HOWEVER Elements Organizer - Photo Downloader renamed and organized the files incorrectly!

My Pictures folder now has a lovely set of folders named 2016 11 30, 2016 12 05, 2016 12 06, etc. and the files inside 2016 11 30 are named 20161130_iPhone_####.JPG but...

The 2016 11 30 folder contains images with a "Date Taken" ranging from July 5, 2016 to November 25, 2016. as well as several videos with a "Date Modified" of November 30, 2016. There doesn't appear to be a rhyme or reason as to why these disparate photos were placed in the same folder.

Each and every folder created from this upload is similarly incorrect.

Photos from the same event, all taken on the same day, are scattered across multiple folders.

By looking within the folder in Windows, and sorting by "Date Taken" I can see that Windows has correctly identified the Date the photo was taken/created or modified.

What could cause this to happen? Is there a way to fix it? I would gladly trash all these folders and do the upload again if I thought that I would have better results a second time, but seeing absolutely no reason as to why the folders were incorrectly renamed, I imagine I would only get the similar results.

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

MichelBParis
MichelBParis
Legend
January 12, 2017

jillniss wrote:

I had 945 photos saved, so it took a long time to complete the upload, but I figured this is gonna be worth it because for the first time I will be organized!

Well, I don't have the same criteria for good organization as yours...

I mainly trust the organizer catalog to do the job and I don't care much about folder organization and photo renaming.

One thing I have in common with you is to let the downloader create the date-based folder tree.

I don't rename. I know some LR gurus recommend renaming, which may be a good thing in some pro workflows. For me it's redundant and creates potential problems. That said I have tried your download options and did not find errors either in the subfolders contents nor in the renaming. I am on Windows 10 and download from several cameras and also from two Android smartphones. I must say I don't trust the date management from the smartphones...

Since I can't reproduce your issue, I can only imagine that:

- there is a bug in the downloader itself, a bug which is not always present (might be due to date templates or language or time zone versions)

- there is something wrong in the way the 'date_taken' is recovered from your files.

For the first hypothesis, it might be useful to run a download test with only importing in the date file structure, or only renaming.

For the second, you might have to search more to find the pattern of the date error.

J
jillnissAuthor
Participating Frequently
January 12, 2017

Thank you for your prompt response Michel. I don't really know the best way to organize. Historically I have uploaded my photos into subfolders by date shot, usually using the camera's software. If I was looking for a picture from Christmas 2010 or my daughter's first birthday, I knew more or less where to look for them. However, it might take me a long time to locate a particular photo if I couldn't remember the exact date.

My New Year's Resolution was to get my collection organized. By now I have tens of thousands of photos, stored on two different computers. My old ancient computer got a virus or something - it is so slow it is practically nonfunctional - but I do have an external backup drive with the same directory structure as the computer. The trouble is, I don't have enough space to move everything onto my new computer because I never bothered to cull my images. To compound matters, I don't always delete the source files as soon as I copy them over, and as a result I have duplicate photos everywhere taking up gigabytes of space.

I have photos taken from various sources - my old Canon, my new Nikon, my old cell phone, my new cell phone, my husband's cell phone, scanner, emails, etc. - but the photos aren't tagged, so I quite often I might look under Nikon Transfer - search by date - look for an image, and not being able to find it, remember, "Oh yeah, I took that with my iPhone!" and then have to search in a different subdirectory.

I need a streamlined process for uploading, naming, culling, tagging, storing, and retrieving photos for editing and printing. Probably at least 80% of my photos can be deleted. I was hoping Organizer could help me identify duplicates in different folders. Right now, it can't even get the folders right.

MichelBParis
MichelBParis
Legend
January 12, 2017

I need a streamlined process for uploading, naming, culling, tagging, storing, and retrieving photos for editing and printing. Probably at least 80% of my photos can be deleted. I was hoping Organizer could help me identify duplicates in different folders. Right now, it can't even get the folders right.

You are absolutely right. You must trust your new organization and first find out what is wrong in the dates read and understood by the organizer.

The organizer being a catalog based system, you don't need to concentrate first on folder structure for the existing media which may stay in various drives and random folders. Of course, it's good to start on a sound basis for new files and your folder structure choice is a good one.

Your problem is not exactly that the folders are not right, it's that what the organizer considers as 'date_taken' (the criteria for the sort order in the browsing space) is not the good one for you. That will automatically result in false subfolders and renaming. If you can check that the downloader can recognize the 'date_taken', both for imports from files and folders and for import from camera or card reader, you can start to 'import' with confidence. You might try to see if the problems you encounter arise for certain cameras, for pictures edited with other softwares.

Before the big (and rewarding) job of culling, keywording, creating albums etc, a correct import will recover the 'date_taken' as well as many other exif data. That will make finding by date easy, even if the files are on several drives, have been edited with different softwares; same for finding by camera.

Removing duplicates will be easier if they can be displayed chronologically.

Suggestion: try first to import both from files and folders and from camera and card reader with the date-based folder tree without renaming.

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