Starting over Lightroom Classic - Moving all pictures to a single folder

[Apneamd]

My folder structure is a mess. Just as an example, I have pictures from 2003 in multiple folders, which somehow have been renamed as belonging to 2015. Also folders labelled (e.g) "Washington DC July 20-26" with all the pictures from those days in a single folder (what was I thinking?).

I wish there was a way of dumping every single picture into a huge folder, and have lightroom pick up all the pictures and move them to new correct folders. I cannot manually move 70,000 pictures. Is there a way of Expoting all the pictures WITHOUT exporting the folder structure, into a single folder?

Thanks

Luis

[Rob_Cullen]

There really is no easy way. (Starting a new Catalog deletes everything you have done- edits, collections, etc, etc)

My suggestion is to use LrC folder panel to 'Move' your photos to a Date based structure, firstly into YEAR based folders, which can be done easily-  (*You must have made backups of ALL photo files and the CATALOG.)

The method I use is-

1) Go to [All Photographs] in the Catalog panel.

2) Create a Metadata Search Filter with one Column for "Date". Any other Columns must show 'All' (cameras, lenses, etc)

3) Select a YEAR of photos from the list and Select all in the Grid view [Ctrl+A].

4) [Right-Click] on a master parent folder to Create a sub-Folder (eg. 2016) inside the 'parent folder'

5) In the dialog to create the Folder check the option to [Include Selected Photos] and [Create]

This will MOVE all 2016 photos into the created '2016' year folder.

6)  Repeat the process for each Year - 2017, 2018, 2019 etc.

You will be left with 'Year' folders of images. (Not one large folder!)

When time permits you can use the same process to divide photos into 'MONTH' sub-folders  (12 for each year!) but this might get tedious.

The backups are imperative in case of stuff-ups,  and we all make those. 🙂

[JohanElzenga]

If you are willing to lose any virtual copy you may have, then there is another way that does it all automatically. Make sure you have enough disk space to copy all 70,000 images. Go to 'All Photographs', expand all stacks if you have stacked images, select all images and then export them into one big folder with 'original' as file type. That will save copies with edits and keywords in either an XMP sidecar file (raw files) or in metadata (dng and rgb files).

Next, create a new catalog, choose Import, select 'Move' at the top center of the dialog (you don't want to create a third copy of each image) and in the destination panel select a folder that is going to be the top folder for your new folder structure. Under 'Organize' select 'By Date' and choose the dated folder structure you want. Your images will now be imported with all their edits still intact, moved to the new top folder and organized in the new folder structure.

If everything looks fine, then you can delete the original image folders and the original catalog, because these are now obsolete duplicates. Be aware that the edit history panel will only show the import step, not the edit steps you made in the old catalog. That is not very important however. The edits are there and that is what matters. You will also not have any old collections anymore so you will need to rebuild these, but if you worry about your folder structure then I assume you do not use collections very much, if at all.

[dj_paige]

First, all photos in a single folder is not a good idea. Operating system tends to slow way down when you have huge numbers of photos in a single folder, and since Lightroom Classic uses operating system calls, you will be causing slowness for certain actions in LrC.

An alternative:

If you want a better way to organize, leave the photos where they are and use keywords and other metadata to do all searching. Once you change your thought process to search with keywords and other metadata, the folder location (which you claim is a mess) is irrelevant (and therefore it is not a mess).

[TheDigitalDog]

First, all photos in a single folder is not a good idea.

By @dj_paige

+1; a really bad idea. 

As to how to move forward, it is a bit like asking a group of people how you should organize your paperwork. Everyone has a slightly (or massively different) process. You need one that works for you. For example, some suggest using multiple folders with date. Never work for me; I'm really awful at dates. But I am good at subjects. I don't care that I shot the dogs in White Sands in 2020, 2019 or 2022. I do know if I want to find shots of dogs in White Sands, I have one folder for that, and I can now sort by date (which again isn't useful for me). Others would find that a weak system, but it works for me. 

I suggest you get and read "The DAM book". It is a great start for giving you ideas on how you may wish to organize your photos, use keywords and smart collections etc. Come up with something that works for you. 

[dj_paige]

First, all photos in a single folder is not a good idea.

By @dj_paige

+1; a really bad idea. 

By @TheDigitalDog

I like your wording better: "a really bad idea"

[JohanElzenga]

If you read the original message carefully, then you'll notice that the OP does not want to store all his images in one folder. He only wants to do this temporarily, as he writes: "I wish there was a way of dumping every single picture into a huge folder, and have lightroom pick up all the pictures and move them to new correct folders." Hence my advice on how he could do this.

[DS256]

I startred over from scratch with a new catalogue but would not recommend that approach. Check out postings on 'organize' on Lightroom Queen like this on https://www.lightroomqueen.com/organize-photos-hard-drive/

[Apneamd]

OK, guys. Thanks for the input

I am almost done with part one of my process.

It is impossible to work from one huge folder. So I created temporary folders "ToTransferRAW" and "ToTransferJPG". I then did a search in Windows using *.CR2, allowed the screen to populate with some files , then selected a bunch, say 3,000, moved them to "ToTransferRAW", (overwritting any duplicates it might find), then Imprting into Lightroom using MOVE, then deleting what was left in the ToTransferRAW folder. Rinse and repeat, but very tedious. Similar process with the JPGs (*.jpg) and finally a handy search "NOT kind:folder" which finds every file in a folder and subfolders

To complicate things, I had made copies of multiple directories in many hard drives over the years. A real mess.

I am now in the process of finding duplicates. For anyone interested, I am using Cisdem Duplicate Finder (20 bucks) which allows you to find duplpicate pictures even if they have different names. Very cool

Thanks again

Luis