Pipeline to Organize Pictures

Collect

Move pictures from all over the place into one working directory. Be careful not to override pictures with the same name! E.g., use mv --backup=numbered some_dir/* working_directory and mv --backup=numbered creates hidden backup files that might be ignored by follow-up programs. ‘unhide’ those files, e.g. using Dr.Rename’s build-in ‘unhide-rename-strategy’.

(Fix Permisssions)

sudo chown alex:users -R .

(Delete File System Metadata)

find . -type d -name '.@__thumb' -exec rm -r "{}" \;

find . -name DS_Store -exec rm -r "{}" \;

Convert .heic files

Check files for duplicates

Rename pictures by meta date

Sort By Date

Start to sort by date. Move to folders named by date, e.g. 2015-05. Again be careful to not override when moving.

Also note, that too many files in one folder will kill performance of your graphical file manager such as Nautilus of Finder. I recommend to keep number of files per folder below 2k.

You can check the number of files inside a folder with

ls 2016 | wc -l

(assuming your file names do not have white spaces)

Example Linux

mv --backup=numbered 201505*jpg ../2015-05/

Example Mac

rsync -a --backup --remove-source-files --progress 2012-*/*.jpg 2012

Example

mv 2021-0?/* 2021

More Helpful sniplets

Unzip all zips into current directory:

unzip -B \*.zip

Delete empty folders:

find . -empty -type d -delete

..work in progress..