As an overview, there are several alternative approaches to filing new images into folders within the computer. It is IMO best to decide on just one of these, and then stick to it consistently. Mixing these can lead to confusion. I've ranked them in increasing order of efficiency and ease of use, according to my personal opinion and judgement.
- To do so yourself first, outside of Lightroom, manually (using for example the Mac Finder / windows Explorer). And only then, as a separate operation, import these into Lightroom Classic using the "Add" (keep in place) option.
- With Lightroom's help, to Copy images straight into their final folder - which therefore needs to already exist - selecting "into one folder" in the Organise option within the Destination panel. That last setting prevents LR from introducing any further automatic subfolders, as seen in the screenshot.
- The same as above, except creating that final destination folder as part of the single operation. Hence you'd choose the parent folder as the destination: perhaps, "2020" could then be left the same all year. Then you check the "into subfolder" option, and for each new import, type in what folder name you want to happen, inside the "2020" parent (or whatever). Again, you would choose Organize "into one folder" since you have again defined the final target yourself.
- Use Lightroom to take care of the final subfolder(s) itself, in a more hands-off way. This means different images within a given batch can file themselves according to a consistent scheme, inside one consistent parent location.
This last option has two Organize variants: following folders from the source, e.g. those made within the camera - or else, following each individual image's capture date according to the camera's date and time clock.
There are various capture-date schemes provided, or else you can customise one.
I use YYYY/MM/DD inside a fixed import destination (and have done so across many years). Year folders have accumulated inside, all by themselves. Then inside each, month and day folders have appeared (some people might combine month and day together, giving fewer levels of hierarchy).
Because that main "Organize" destination is constant, imports combine properly alongside each other within a single overarching scheme. Rather than, having separate year / month / day arrangements arise in separate places.
After a given final date based folder has been auto-created, named and populated by LR, it is possible to edit its folder name further (doing so within LR) - appending something descriptive, for example, as to the event or the client. You've had the maximum help from LR in getting to that point, with the minimum effort / risk of pilot error. I don't do this though: I add suitable keywords within the Import dialog, to characterise a given import batch's content and purpose - leaving the folder filing scheme as a pure storage technicality, which I regard as entirely for LR to implement.
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