Image management ( I-Mac )

[Michael_Lambert]

Hey guys,

So.. Upgrading my hardware and such. I have 3 Seagate 500 gig drives that really have my images all over the place.

I am using my Imac and what i need to do is pull all the images from these three drives and put them into my new 1TB Raid setup which is then dumped weekly onto a 1TB single drive and stored at my office.

So i know i have just over 500 Gigs of images which is why i am moving to the 1TB system however i am trying to find the best way to search the three USB drives and my Mac Harddrive for all CR2 files and all Jpeg Files and move them on to the new drive in two folders one for all RAW files and one for all Jpegs which i want to then import into a software and apply tags too.

I started using Lightroom2 it found 140+ thousand images doing the search and two days ago i started the copy to the new drive and import to cataloge... however like i said that was 2 days ago running 24/7 and its only done like 20 thousand!

is there no faster way of doing this??? getting them all moved to the one drive, then do the cateloging????

[Moppie]

Someone asked this very question some time ago, and got given links to different software that will do this quickly.

If no answer appears in here, I can move it to the PP forum after a couple of days if you like?

[Michael_Lambert]

Yea i thought i had seen something like this but cant seem to find it. I know i had asked a while ago for the PC platform.. but since then i made the move to the Mac.

[MaxxuM]

Wow, 140,000 uncatalogued photos lol...

Are you consolidating the photos (moving them) or just cataloging them in place (leaving them where they are)? if you are moving them (while leaving the originals) that can take a very long time as Aperture may be having to convert the photos as you go (even resizing them). Just cataloging 140+K files should only take a single night.

[Rodinal]

iMac
iMac
small i, capital M.
Not that it's fatal... it's just easy to copy what's written in front of you, isn't it? :)

[Rodinal]

Aperture works great. However, I think it copies all images within its own library. Then you'll have to erase the files (if you need to the space) and simply make a back-up copy of the Aperture Library. Then if you need to send out a .cr2 file, you simply export it from within Aperture. Other solution: Adobe Bridge. It doesn't copy files in a library, but you'll have to let it work for a few hours to create previews of all your images.

I don't think LightRoom was intended to work with such a high volume.

Also, whether you're using Aperture or Bridge, don't let it work with all your images at once. Import by batches, let's say 10 000 files at once. 5 000 at once would be even better if you have the time. Overall it should be faster.

[Rodinal]

Personnally, I don't keep catalogs of my entire work. I find it useless. I shoot, then maybe I need some images 4-5 times, then I'm done.

I have around 200 000 images stored on DVDs and hard drives. My Aperture catalog is about 1500 images, only recent stuff and stuff I'm still working on.

[Rodinal]

them on to the new drive in two folders one for all RAW files and one for all Jpegs which i want to then import into a software and apply tags too.

Another big mistake.
Sort them by projects, one folder each. If you can't, create one folder for a month's worth of work. Or just find a way that suits you. A folder with tens of thousands of files slows down the iMac itself and any application.

[Michael_Lambert]

I plan on sorting them after the fact.. right now from carlessness i have my files all over the place, and often in duplicates and triplets just for really poor data management.

Right now i just want to find a way to search all the drives for CR2 files and copy them to a single folder on the new drive, then search for all JPEG files and copy them to a single folder on the new drive.

Then i can load that folder into bridge and start assigning keywords for each and then search by keyword and move them into there own folders.

[MaxxuM]

I plan on sorting them after the fact.. right now from carlessness i have my files all over the place, and often in duplicates and triplets just for really poor data management.

Right now i just want to find a way to search all the drives for CR2 files and copy them to a single folder on the new drive, then search for all JPEG files and copy them to a single folder on the new drive.

Then i can load that folder into bridge and start assigning keywords for each and then search by keyword and move them into there own folders.

OK, then that isn't so hard. First, try to find all the image folders and move them yourself. When that's done go download Picasa and it will automatically search all your drives (even when you plug in a USB flash drive or external HDD). You'll have to learn how to use Picasa, but it's super easy. It will probably take a good while for it to find all your photos, but it's allot faster than other methods.

[Moppie]

I plan on sorting them after the fact.. right now from carlessness i have my files all over the place, and often in duplicates and triplets just for really poor data management.



Can't you just open the folders, sort by file type, which will seperate them into .cr2, .jpeg etc.

Then grab chunks of the the CR2 files (say a couple of thousand at at time, it is not good to move huge chunks of data in one go) then copy them to your new drive?
Then repeat for the JPEG files.

Please tell me OS-X lets you view a list of files, and sort them by type. (I'm sure it does, because I'm sure I've done it while trying to find an obscure, specialist file type).

[Michael_Lambert]

Yea i can but i have done a search through Windows oringally and well i have something like 8 hundred folders.. lol

[Rodinal]

Then i can load that folder into bridge and start assigning keywords for each and then search by keyword and move them into there own folders.

As I told you, don't do that.
Loading a 140K folder into Bridge is risky.
Load folders.

[Rodinal]

I plan on sorting them after the fact.. right now from carlessness i have my files all over the place, and often in duplicates and triplets just for really poor data management.

Right now i just want to find a way to search all the drives for CR2 files and copy them to a single folder on the new drive, then search for all JPEG files and copy them to a single folder on the new drive.

Then i can load that folder into bridge and start assigning keywords for each and then search by keyword and move them into there own folders.

You have to do a bit of Finder management before you use a catalog sofware.
If you plan on counting only on that software.. well, good luck to you.

[Michael_Lambert]

Well i am not looking to load the one folder containing all the files into the catalog software. Was just hoping i could browse and find all the CR2 files and have it move them to the new folder instead of all over the place now... So i dont have to spend days going through all the folders individually :D

[Titus213]

On my PC I would use my backup software to move the *.cr2 files to a 'backup' location.

I use SyncBack. Not sure if there is an iMac equivalent. I hven't started using my Mac for photo processing yet and probably will not for quite a while.

[wlescall]

I just gave this a try (I did it for some PDF's I was looking for):

Use Spotlight to find ".cr2" files.
Create the folder you want to copy them into.
Select the files in the finder and
Drag to copy them into the new folder.

I agree that you should not use 1 folder for a large number of files. I use a nested folder system sorted by date (yr-month-day) and then by shoot.

[Tony-S]

If you mount the volume on your Mac, you can find by month using the attached Find window (cmd-F), then copy the files to month/year (or whatever) folders. This example shows all .cr2 files created in May of this year.

[Michael_Lambert]

Thanks Tony,

But it seems to only being reading the Mac's harddive not looking in the USB drives, and when i could search the USB drive it would not look in the sub folders.

[Tony-S]

Hmm. Not sure what's happening. Mine searches all attached volumes (including USB); however, all my volumes are HFS+. What's your drive's format?

[wlescall]

"This Mac" is highlighted; that means it will search for all files with the indicated criteria on all available readable volumes. If you click on "tony" it will search the drive named "tony".

[Tony-S]

"This Mac" is highlighted; that means it will search for all files with the indicated criteria on all available readable volumes. If you click on "tony" it will search the drive named "tony".

Are you addressing me? If so, I am aware of that, which is why I highlighted "This Mac" in the screen shot. Will it also examine FAT32 or NTFS volumes?

[wlescall]

Yes Tony. I figured you knew the bit about "this Mac". That part was for anyone unfamiliar with OSX. But it will search all readable volumes attached (even the DVD drive). I occasionally forget when searching for files and then have to start over. :oops:

[Michael_Lambert]

Well attached is a screen shot of my mac and as you can see i have two usb drives attached.. however when i do the search even on the "This Mac" it does not search the other drives. As you can see its only finding less than 900 shots, these are the only shots that are stored on the MAC HD and not the USB HD's

[Tony-S]

It sounds like Spotlight is not indexing those drives. Are they always connected to your Mac, or did you just attach them? If just attached, you can force indexing by leaving them connected, then open a terminal window and type:

sudo mdutil -E /

You'll be prompted for your password. This enables indexing for Spotlight and should allow the search function to work on other volumes. It may take a few hours for the indexing to complete, so just let it run. If you open Activity Monitor, there should be a task called 'mds' (and Spotlight) running - that's the indexer.

[Michael_Lambert]

Tony,

The drives are attached all the time. One drive is NTSF and the other is FAT32.

What exactly do you mean a terminal window? I have no idea.

[Tony-S]

Tony,

The drives are attached all the time. One drive is NTSF and the other is FAT32.


There's the problem (and why I asked above what the formats were). Spotlight cannot search Windows drives, as far as I know.

Let me think about this some more...

[Michael_Lambert]

I know the windows drive is NTSF and i know the mac can only read it just can't write to it.. But all i am looking to do is pull files from it and put them on the MAC Drive.

[Tony-S]

The problem is that Spotlight writes the index to the drive, so it should be able to index your FAT32 volume. You can also write to the NTFS volume provided you install the two freeware apps NTFS-3G and MacFuse. It might be worth trying, but that would make me nervous.

I think what I'd do would be to copy all the files from one of your drives over to a temporary folder on your iMac, then after Spotlight indexes that folder (which could be hours) you could search for those .CR2 files using the Find window, then just move them to new folders that you create with the name of the month/year (e.g. "2009 June" or whatever). But this would require that you have sufficient free space on your iMac's hard drive.