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Question

Is it possible to move photos?

Forum|Forum|14 years ago
March 22, 2011
2 replies
2815 views

I'm looking to move photos around programatically. The basic equivalent of dragging a folder around in the Folders hierarchy. I can see how I could "move" any old file with LrFileUtils, but I want LR to keep track of the move in its index.

Thanks,

Andy

SDK

This topic has been closed for replies.

Inspiring

Hello from 13 years in the future 🙂 where ChatGPT (an Artificial Intelligence thing!) can help us write plugins. I love the future.

Anyway, what do you think of this workflow:

1) use LrFileUtils to move the file

2) import the new photo in it's new location

3) add the new photo to a collection "moved_to"

4) add the old photo (now missing) to a collection "moved_from"

Then, the user (me!) can manually delete the photos in the moved_from collection, using the menu item Photo -> Remove Photos From Catalog, perhaps after cutting and pasting metadata.

I hear there's maybe a way to programatically cut-n-paste metadata.

Inspiring

After moving file with LrFileUtils LrC will mark them as missing and so you have find them yourself again in the good location.
Tis simpler to move via LrC directly.

I hear there's maybe a way to programatically cut-n-paste metadata.

You can do with photo:getRawMetadata() and then do photo:setRawMetadata( )

Legend

"Is it possible to move photos?"

No.

I hate leaving it at that, but its darn near that simple.

I mean some of us have come up with elaborate compromises to work-around the limitation in some plugins, but there is no way to remove a photo from the catalog, nor change its folder or path...

I hope this is remedied in Lr4. Consider submitting an official feature request since Adobe may not be reading this forum anymore - no peep from them here in many months...

I consider this a big limitation of the SDK.

Rob

Inspiring

Hi,

areohbee wrote:
there is no way to remove a photo from the catalog, nor change its folder or path

As Rob mentioned this is not currently possible. Please raise a feature request if you would like to see this remedied in future.

To be fair I can see why Adobe might not want to do this. If they add this feature who's support desk do you think will be called when a plugin error causes photos to be lost or the catalog to no longer link to photos? Even though someone else's code causes the problem they will still be blamed, or at least implicated. Any code using such a feature would need to be bulletproof.

areohbee wrote:
I hope this is remedied in Lr4. Consider submitting an official feature request since Adobe may not be reading this forum anymore - no peep from them here in many months...

For the sake of clarity, you should not assume that any post in this forum will result in a change to the product, be it the resolution of a bug or addition of a new feature, unless an Adobe employee responds to the thread to confirm it is being included. If you have a bug you need resolved or feature to be added please report it here. This forum is great for discussing and clarifying bugs and features before submitting them but it is not a replacement for the official form.

Matt

Legend

I doubt Adobe has deliberately witheld this feature for fear of being blamed or being bombarded with support calls.

I remember I made such a suggestion when Eric Scouten was hanging out in the forum after Lr3 first came out and he vehemently corrected me.

There are plenty of functions that can cause damage already by a plugin, an API for renaming a photo would not be much worse...

R