Importing photos into bridge.

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
October 17, 2024
2 replies
2616 views

I'm trying to use bridge to organize my photos. Download from camera works well and I need to bring my old files into the same folder scheme (one folder per day in this case).
The only way I've found to do this is to copy the files to a USB memory stick (or card) and run "get photos from camera" using the memory card. Is there a better way to do this?

Stephen Marsh

Community Expert

@michaela38849736

I use ExifTool for this task. Perhaps a Bridge script could be created, I usually create scripts for Photoshop, not Bridge, so my knowledge of what is possible is limited.

Presuming that you have "one root/top-level folder containing many loose images without any subfolders"...

exiftool '-directory<${directory}/${datetimeoriginal}' -d '%Y/%Y-%m/%Y-%m-%d' '/path to/source/images folder'

This command line code will create the following directory structure based on the shooting date, moving all files into the newly created sub-folders based on Year / Year-Month / Year-Month-Day:

This command line code is formatted for the Mac, Windows users would use straight double-quote marks.

One could also add the -r or -recurse argument before the path to the folder if there were sub-folders to process.

It's easy enough to create "droplet" type applications or custom contextual right-click commands in the Mac Finder or create "droplet" type shortcuts in Windows Explorer if you don't need to use the terminal.app or cmd.exe on a regular basis.

gary_sc

Community Expert

I think the problem you might be having is that you're making this too complicated, @michaela38849736

Bridge is a viewer of "things" in folders. Unlike Lightroom Classic, which relies upon a catalog (and you do need to import images into Lightroom Classic), Bridge does not. If you download your images into a folder and "point" Bridge to that folder, you will see all of your images. Simply, there is nothing to import into.

Can you let us know if you're on a PC or a Mac and we can supply some tips to help you along.

M

michaela38849736Author

Known Participant

I'm running Windows 11. I don't think I'm making things too complicated. Bridge can create a new folder structure that is better organized than my decade plus old collection of files. This new structure will make it easier to deal with the files going forward, but this can only be accomplished if the files are coming from an external source. I even tried an exfat formatted external drive and bridge does not recognize it on the device list. That drive is the one I would use if I was recovering pro-res video on my iPhone.

M

michaela38849736Author

Known Participant

Create whatever folder structure you require using Bridge. Then why not Copy and Paste your files from source to destination? Photo Downloader is not the correct tool for this. Bridge itself has the capacity to Cut/Copy/Move/Rename your files. I can't see a problem with this.

Oh, but you surely didn't mean that your years of photos are still sitting in your cameras?

I'll try to explain this one more time.

Download from camera will automatically create one folder per day, which helps manage my photo collection.

I would like to have this scheme consistent across my entire collection, going back over 10 years and 5 different cameras. Bridge rename will not automatically create this folder structure. I would need to create each folder and run the rename process for each day in which the photos were taken. all this work is already being done in the download from camera logic. If I copy my photos to an external USB drive I can then use the download functon, but only if bridge sees that location as a "camera". Some USB drives will work, but the SSD that I would use for pro-res video recording is not seen as a "camera" device. if Adobe loosened their definiton of a camera, this function could help combine and organize images from multiple sources.

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded