Catalog is a mess with date structure, best way to proceeed?

[silsurf@me.com]

One of my catalogs has a dizzying array of folder dates and it has becomes difficult to find images.

I think early on the import was set to have each day in a different folder and then it was changed at some point, bu the end result is that when I look into some of the folders there are hundreds of directories, some with 0 or 1 phot in them.

Is there something I would do other than just start over and reimport the entire catalog (it is a large one containing approx 80,00 images.

And if starting over is the best way forward, what exactly should my import setting be to avoid even more confusion?

[GoldingD]

DO NOT Re-IMPORT.

Consider, in LrC, creating a sensible file structure within the Folders Panel. In other words, restructure the folders. Something you like, something that makes sense to you. Then withing LrC, using the Folders Panel, move them images into the desired folders. This will take time.

some links:

• https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/create-folders.html
• How do I reorganize my Folders panel? | Lightroomk Queen
• Lightroom Video Tutorial: Organize and Manage Your Photos and Folders | Laura Shoe
•  

In theory, you could do this outside of LrC, but then you would have to accomplish a lot of corrections in LrC in the Folder Panel. Some may try that as the Folders Panel is not a Folder Manager, and they would prefer to use the OS folder manager. But you would wind up with lots of folder issues, lots of missing photos, that would then need correction, as in:

https://www.computer-darkroom.com/lr2_find_folder/find-folder.htm

[silsurf@me.com]

Thansk. I do all of my folder management inside LrC

Is there a way to force the LrC to re-orgainize the folders in the way that I want? Or do I have to manually move them?

This catalog is my oldest Catalog, been around since LR first appeared. For some reason beyond my know there are files that are not in the correct folder. Not a lot, maybe a few hundred? I dont mind doin gthe manual moving, but want to make sure I am doing so as expediently as possible?

[dj_paige]

One of the major strengths of a catalog is that you don't have to search by folder name. If you had set up keywords or other metadata to help you find your photos, you could use that.

Even if you absolutely must search by capture date, the Lightroom Classic Filter Bar will do that for you, even if the folder names are not consistent. So find photos by the Filter Bar capture date, and if necessary, move them to a folder with a better name.

Or, if the issue is not finding the photos, just getting a consistent folder name, use LrC to rename folders manually so that the naming is more to your liking.

But really, there are much better ways, keywords and other metadata. I never search by capture date to find my photos. Better you should spend time keywording than fixing folder names, you will accrue many more benefits than simply fixing folders.

So, do not re-import. This is so important, I am going to say it again. Do not re-import. And @GoldingD has also told you that as well.

[silsurf@me.com]

Sometimes I like to find things by date as it is the only info I have on the image, I tried to go trough my entire 80,000 to keyword, but never completed the project

[Jill_C]

Once you have properly organized the folders by date, the process of keywording will be easier. Often, all of the images from a particular date are the same subject and location, so you can apply basic keywords to the entire days' images. I do that when I import. For instance, on a recent Mississippi River Cruise, we went on a swamp tour by airboat. I added the keywords "Mississippi River,cruise,airboat,swamp,tour,Louisiana" to the entire set for the day. 

[dj_paige]

Sometimes I like to find things by date as it is the only info I have on the image, I tried to go trough my entire 80,000 to keyword, but never completed the project

By silsurf@me.com

As I said, you can use the filter bar to find things by capture date, regardless of the naming of your folders.

As far as the fact that you have 80,000 photos, this is all the more reason why you want a strong and reliable system of keywords. The effort will be worth it. (If you had 2,000 photos, keywording isn't that critical; with 80,000 it is critical to keyword IMHO)

[silsurf@me.com]

I am re-orgainizing my folders and wondered how to deal with the following:

inside of an exisitng folder there are sometimes images withthe same name. When I try to move them they will not move due to this fact. Is there a way to move them to another folder inside LrC and have a unique name attributed to the that have the same names?

[Sean McCormack]

It's amazing the variety of options you have when organsing. When organising my 700,000 strong catalog, I ALWAYS rename my folders. I use the 2024/01/15 structure and then rename the folder after import, leaving the date intact. E.g. the folder name might look like '15 Ballyloughane at Sunset'. I do keyword on import as well. If I need to find images on a particular topic or location for a client, or article, I use the folder search bar first. Know the date means I can also gauge roughly which folder the image I want is in. For instance today I wanted a shot from Fanore Beach for a magazine article and found it quickly this way. I'm not saying that you have to do it. I'm just saying it is an option should it suit how you work. 

I know I know, 700K means I need to get better at deleting. 

[richardplondon]

On this idea of renaming auto-dated folders: very helpful for finding images. But with the drawback that a meaningful folder name does not carry over into an export, nor into a collection. Keywords do, being attributes of the image itself rather than its storage context.

I also use YYYY/MM/DD structure when importing, chosen as easy for Lr to implement all by itself, and straightforward to reorganise my pre-existing files and folders into, back when I first adopted Lightroom (reorganising before their original import). 

A means of (Move) auto-reorganisation of already-imported image files, would have been an excellent facility to have - but unfortunately only auto-renaming of individual files is offered.

I don't pay much attention to folder names, but if I did, perhaps something like "YYYY"/"MM"/"YYYY-MM-DD" might have been better e.g. as folders are seen in the Recent Sources list. Any text suffix onto the auto folder name being of course optional.

Unfortunately the "into subfolder" option at Import does not combine well with auto-filing into dated folders. That's because the subfolder is made first inside the chosen main destination and only then does dated auto-filing happen below that: which is IMO completely the wrong way around. Far better If auto-filing could first take care of the year and the month (say), and then if the custom-typed subfolder name occurred below that. Ah well.

[Sean McCormack]

Yes. Exactly why I rename the folders.. and because I dont want yet another level of hierachy. 3 is deep enough. 

[dj_paige]

inside of an exisitng folder there are sometimes images withthe same name. When I try to move them they will not move due to this fact. Is there a way to move them to another folder inside LrC and have a unique name attributed to the that have the same names?

By silsurf@me.com

More explanation is needed. As far as I understand things, there cannot be two photos with identical file names in the same folder. This is true for your operating system and I believe it is true in LrC as well.

[Jill_C]

Are you sure you don't have a RAW and a JPG with the same base name? You can rename files in their current location. I usually append a "-2" to the file name.

[Conrad_C]

inside of an exisitng folder there are sometimes images withthe same name. When I try to move them they will not move due to this fact. Is there a way to move them to another folder inside LrC and have a unique name attributed to the that have the same names?

By silsurf@me.com

As others pointed out, this would still be a problem if you were using no photo organizing apps at all, because a computer doesn’t allow two files of the same name in one folder. So one way to solve it is to ask, do you have a way that you like to name files and differentiate them, in general? What would your naming approach be if they were two word processing or spreadsheet files with the same name?

Also, why do both images have the same name, is it because they’re different versions of the same image, or are they completely unrelated images that have the same name by coincidence? Maybe one could be renamed in a way that’s consistent with how it’s different.

A way that I avoid duplicate names is to rename them by their capture date and time, because I’ll never take two pictures of the same name on the same day. For example, if two images named IMG_0157.RAW are taken four years apart on different cameras, if Lightroom Classic is set to rename all images on import, one way those two images can exist in the same folder are if they are renamed with their capture year at the front:

20050910-IMG_0157.RAW

20090908-IMG_0157.RAW

If you wanted to solve your duplicate names that way, you could select one or both and use the File > Rename command with Date and Original Filename tokens.

[Sean McCormack]

I suspect the main reason @GoldingD is suggesting not to reimport is losing all your settings. 

You could mitigate that by going to All Photographs in the Catalog panel and then Select All. Use Command + S to save metadata to the files. 

If you wanted to then create a new catalog, you could import and have your setting intact. Make sure to set up the Destination folder the way you want the folders to appear. 

What are the issues? You lose Collections, Flags and Virtual copies. You wouldn't import 80,000 images in one go, you'd need to do it in stages, so that is time consuming. 

The other option is to do as @GoldingD suggests and create a folder system manually and move the files within Lightroom. There's no option that isn't time consuming, but this method keeps everything intact with little chance of image or information loss. 

[Jill_C]

Re-importing all of your images is the LAST thing that I would consider. If folder dates are in a consistent format, i.e. 2014-01-14 they will sort naturally into date order. If those folder date names are in different formats, change those first. (right click-rename). If there are subfolders within those date folders that don't belong there, move them to the correct folder by dragging and dropping. I don't have a clear picture of what the problem is from your description of "dizzying array of folder dates", so can't give any suggestions beyond the basics of renaming and moving, all of which must be done within LRC. Don't attempt to doing any reorganization of folders outside of LRC or you'll compound the mess.

[richardplondon]

I tried to bite my virtual tongue, but failed to control myself!

"01-14-2014" does not sort naturally into date order.

My first thought was that this sorts into all the images taken on the 1st day of the month (various months, various years), then all the images taken on the 2nd day of the month, and so on.

Or it might denote all the photos taken in January (various days, various years) and then all the photos taken in February. 

Once I realised 01-14-2014 could not be the first day of the fourteenth month, I understood it must be the latter scheme - but if it had been say 03-04-2014 I could have continued in that mistake.This depends on which date convention you are used to - which varies around the world.

YYYY-MM-DD is well understood the same worldwide (it's the ISO standard) and that scheme DOES sort chronologically. YYYY instead of YY ensures a year number is never going to get mistaken for a month number or a day number; and immediately distinguishes this scheme from both of the above date schemes.

I have set this in my Windows regional settings, so have got this constantly visible in the corner of my screen - which really helped speed up adoption.

[Jill_C]

The date format in my post was a typo. The format I actually use is one of the LRC suggested options, which is 2014-01-14.