Move photos to consistent folders

[SteveM49]

Over the years, I have been inconsistent in telling Lightroom how to handle Imports.  Sometimes I would import from a hard drive via "move" and sometimes via "Copy" or "Add".  At this late date, I'd like to have all the photos in a single set of file folders differentiated by date.  Is there a way to undo my earlier sins and get redemption?

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

If you're willing to do a lot of manual work, and assuming you understand how to move folders that contain photos imported into LR, yes, of course there is.

But if I were you, and I was about to devote a large amount of time to some type of "organizing", I'd leave the photos exactly where they are, and add keywords and other metadata to the photos; and then all future searches for photos would not be by folder but by keyword or other metadata. Not only will this give you a more powerful and flexible organization, but it is much less error prone than moving folders. And from that point forward, you can essentially ignore your folders, Lightroom will do the hard task of remembering what folder things are stored in, so you don't have to remember what folder things are stored in.

[gary_sc]

You do not say how many images you are dealing with but first and foremost DO NOT MOVE THE IMAGE'S FOLDERS IN EITHER THE FINDER OR THE EXPLORER.

Sorry for the all caps but the best/only way to move images in folders is to do that within LR in the Folder's Panel while in Library mode.

While I mostly agree with DJ above, I also rely upon folders for my basic image maneuvering so I do share your desire. Nonetheless, can you estimate how many images within how many folders you are talking about? There is a big difference between some 10,000 images and 100,000 images. The good news is that whatever you chose to do, your final folder setup will be logical to you now. By that I mean you will be intentionally setting up the order to a good system as opposed to whatevermaybewillbe system you had before.

As an alternative to having your folders identified only by date, one other option might be to have the date AND the subject. Something like either Florida vacation May 2015 (or 2015-5 Florida vacation). The way I'd do this is to select all of the images you want to move, then click on your "Master folder" (the one that will hold all of your sub-folders) and right click on this folder, provide the name you want, and make sure that you have checked (Move all selected images into this folder). Then you do this again and again and again until done.

Lastly, while doing this process, be sure to do a backup of your catalog at the end of every day. This is a "just in case" thing.

Or you just do what DJ suggested.

Let us know what you end up doing, I'm curious.