Software to re-organize photos?

Not sure if Aperture 3 or Lightroom 3 can do this, but I need some software that will re-organize my photos...

I have a bunch that were imported on the computer, before I started using Lightroom 3, by some title I gave, such as "Houston Vacation", or "Jacks 1st Birthday" etc...

I now want to reorganize them by Year/YYYY-MM-DD as Lightroom defaults to now.

So I have my newest photos in the 2010/2010-10-18 folders...but everything before that is just in these named folders.

I need something to take the photos by the data/exif whatever date taken, and organize like that. Is it too late for that?

Aperture and LR can both do this. It's what they were made for It will be a little tedious, but by making smart albums (in Aperture) you could have things sorted pretty quickly. The bigger issue is which program to buy. LR3 is more powerful and some of it's tools are superior to Aperture, but Aperture is $110 less but comes with about 95% of the features as LR. Aperture is very easy to pick up and start using while LR is more complex. There are also third party programs that are excellent, but it's been a while since I've used them. Bibble and Lightzone come to mind.

I own both LR3 and A3, so I'm just trying to figure out how to do this in them.
I'm wanting them sorted like this on the physical disk structure, not just in the program.

So really what I'm wanting is to resort them on the NAS drive, where my originals are stored.
Restructuring the file server side.

For instance right now I have folders on the NAS that are all just descriptive folders, which I want to have renamed by the YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD

I don't know of anything that will reorganize them on the physical drive. Here is a comparison of most of the cataloging software out there with links to their sites. Maybe one of these will do what you want.

Thanks Sheldon, it might be something I just have start from scratch and re-import each folder using the new settings, then delete the duplicates?

How much processing have you done or how much are you willing to lose?

Here's what I would do if I were in your situation:
1. Move all your photos to a temporary location or hard drive.
2. Download and install Downloader Pro from Breeze Systems; and configure the software to create date-based folders and sort your images into these folders.
3. Point the software at the temporary location and instruct it to import your photos based on the criteria established in step 3.
4. Go grab lunch and when you return all your photos will be moved and sorted into date-based folders.

While Lightroom can do most of this work, its not as flexible in file-naming as dedicated software like Downloader Pro. If you want to use custom file names, Lightroom is not as robust as other programs. Other similar software are ImageIngester and Digital Image Mover.

PixelMagic wrote in post #11125043
How much processing have you done or how much are you willing to lose?

Here's what I would do if I were in your situation:
1. Move all your photos to a temporary location or hard drive.
2. Download and install Downloader Pro from Breeze Systems; and configure the software to create date-based folders and sort your images into these folders.
3. Point the software at the temporary location and instruct it to import your photos based on the criteria established in step 3.
4. Go grab lunch and when you return all your photos will be moved and sorted into date-based folders.

While Lightroom can do most of this work, its not as flexible in file-naming as dedicated software like Downloader Pro. If you want to use custom file names, Lightroom is not as robust as other programs. Other similar software are ImageIngester and Digital Image Mover.

These are all RAW/JPG Images that have no processing on them, so I don't care if I lose any or not. These are my untouched files. I just want them reorganized. So I can lose all of if any there is. I want them to be the untouched RAWs and JPGs. And I don't care about the file names either. Right now I just want all the current photos that are in stupidly named descriptive folders to be moved to a more organized date oriented style as mentioned.

Can LR or Aperture do that? If not I'll look into these mentioned one's you've provided. But the one catch is I'm Mac only, no PC software.

Well, from a Lightroom perspective, what you could do is create a new catalog and then just import each folder using the import naming scheme to name the folders and files according to your chosen naming scheme and have the import copy and/or move the folder into your chosen folder structure. In other words, just treat each folder as a new import. Or if you have already done work with these images, you might want to just move things within Lightroom. You can create folders and rename things in Lightroom -- the Rename function lets you customize a naming scheme -- check these things out and see if something fits.

Ok Tony, so if I did that, but still wanted them stored on the same NAS, I could manually one folder by one run the import copy to the new dated format, then delete the physical old files/folders from the previous descriptive format?

Move ALL your photos to one central location then use whatever software you choose to reorganize them.

PixelMagic wrote in post #11125226
Move ALL your photos to one central location then use whatever software you choose to reorganize them.

Yeah, thats kind of the idea I'm thinking, except I don't want to actually move them from each descriptive folder to a central location myself, manually, I was hoping the software would do that. So instead, the import and point to each folder then let it move/copy to my settings might work, I will give this a shot and report back my efforts.

Thanks for all the advice friends.

If you use a new catalog to import them, then the import process can create a new folder with your desired name and physically move the files and rename them.

You can also move folders/files by simply dragging and dropping them within Lightroom, or selecting them and right-clicking on a target folder to move them.

If you try to do all this outside of Lightroom, the LR catalog will lose track of the locations and you will have to direct it to find missing files and folders. If you rename files outside of Lightroom, it will be worse -- you will have to re-import the files and delete the old references from your catalog.

So, basically, anything you can do in Lightroom will make things easier and less messy.

I actually just tried out the MOVE function of the import and that did what I wanted.
So I'll just move them all using the new structure, and it will be done.

Sounds good! Lightroom does have plenty of functionality that some people never explore -- getting one of the "basic" Lightroom books by Victoria Bampton, Martin Evening or Scott Kelby can be a very worthwhile way of spending some money and the time to read and get acquainted with the various functions and features.

I considered a book, and will probably get one, but I'm also going to join Lynda.com to learn LR3 and A3 in more visual detail.