Moving specific folders from one catalog to another

[dianap31691216]

For a number of reasons, I have decided to move my photos to a different hard-drive and at the same time correct some organization errors in my original Photoshop catalog.  I have created a new catalog on the new hard-drive and have begun building the new structure and have loaded some pictures. However, I want to be able to transfer my old catalog FOLDER-BY-FOLDER to the new catalog (each folder represents 1 day's worth  of photos) in order to pull over the people/place identifications and deal with any corrections that should be needed in small batches. Has anyone got a method of doing this? I have only been able to find a method to move the entire catalog, and that will not get me where I need to be.

Thanks in  advance.

[MichelBParis]

dianap31691216  wrote

For a number of reasons, I have decided to move my photos to a different hard-drive and at the same time correct some organization errors in my original Photoshop catalog.  I have created a new catalog on the new hard-drive and have begun building the new structure and have loaded some pictures. However, I want to be able to transfer my old catalog FOLDER-BY-FOLDER to the new catalog (each folder represents 1 day's worth  of photos) in order to pull over the people/place identifications and deal with any corrections that should be needed in small batches. Has anyone got a method of doing this?

Thanks in  advance.

'at the same time' is impossible. Managing files by catalogs is incompatible to managing files by folders. You can do both, but you have to do it separately... and only from the organizer, which implies that everything has been imported in the catalog.

I have only been able to find a method to move the entire catalog, and that will not get me where I need to be.

That's half of the job. It's the necessary first step. (It may be the only step required).

The second step is to rework your folder organization in the organizer, which is similar to doing it in the explorer or finder.

The smart idea is to rely on catalogs and to choose a very simple folder structure, the main type being date based subfolders.

You can create the same hierarchies and trees with albums or categories and tags as in your physical folders. That 'virtual' organization is much more powerful and flexible. It's much faster and you don't have to do the job twice.

[dianap31691216]

Thanks for your response, Michael. I can see that I did not do a good job of stating the problem.

My current catalog is organized by date (when importing From Camera I have used the option Create Subfolders Shot Date) which worked nicely when importing From Camera. Problems have cropped up when bringing pictures in from different types of phones or when pictures with many “actual dates” were scanned in and the scan date was used as the shot date. In addition, my catalog is huge and, as a result is very slow. It seems reasonable to separate the catalog into several smaller catalogs while moving those smaller catalogs to a faster hard-drive.

I believe, from your answer, that there is not currently a way to accomplish this, since only a complete catalog can be moved rather than selected portions of it regardless of the file structure within the catalog. Am I correct?

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[MichelBParis · Accepted solution]

dianap31691216  wrote

My current catalog is organized by date (when importing From Camera I have used the option Create Subfolders Shot Date) which worked nicely when importing From Camera.

Yes, this is my default way of organizing folders.

Problems have cropped up when bringing pictures in from different types of phones or when pictures with many “actual dates” were scanned in and the scan date was used as the shot date.

That is true, there are many situations like scans when the date is  not the 'date_taken'. It's always a problem to store files in date based folders even if it's not so much problematic to correct the estimated 'date_taken' in the catalog and even in the file metadata header for searching in the catalogs. Suggestion: create a master folder to store such scanned pictures. That will make moving files to the right subfolders easier.

. In addition, my catalog is huge and, as a result is very slow.

What size in GB and number of items? A huge catalog would hold much more than one hundred thousand pictures. The catalog should not be slow except for a few operations like back up or optimization. It's an error to think that splitting the catalog (which is always a big problem) will help. If your catalog is slow, there may be another reason, for instance if you use face recognition. A faster hard drive is good, but the main factor is the available amount of RAM. The default 4 GB is really a minumum.

I believe, from your answer, that there is not currently a way to accomplish this, since only a complete catalog can be moved rather than selected portions of it regardless of the file structure within the catalog. Am I correct?

You are right. But I think that moving the whole catalog and photo files folder is the best starting step before optimizing the folder structure afterwards.

[dianap31691216]

Not what I had hoped for but you make some excellent points. Thank you for your help.

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