53 Comments

1. Mike
   Posted April 26, 2013 at 9:24 pm | Permalink

   Hi John,

   I am currently including this feature in the upcoming PhotoMove 2.0 version. I’m sending you a private email.

   Thanks,

   Mike

2. Mike
   Posted April 26, 2013 at 9:09 pm | Permalink

   Derrick,

   Thanks for your nice comments and your donation. I really appreciate hearing from users who have saved time and been pleased with PhotoMove.

   I’ll be emailing you about a new version of PhotoMove that I will be releasing in the next few days. I would really appreciate your feedback.

   Thanks again!

   Mike

3. Mike
   Posted April 26, 2013 at 9:05 pm | Permalink

   Hi Robert,

   I’m currently in the process of adding this feature. I’ll let you know when I have a beta version available.

4. Robert
   Posted April 20, 2013 at 12:10 pm | Permalink

   Thank you! Thank You! I’ve been looking for this for years.

   One enhancement I would like is the ability to create a folder for the camera model from the EXIF data. With family members all backing up their photos on my drives I would like to keep them separated by the camera model and then use the date structure below that.

   Thanks Again.

5. Derrick
   Posted April 3, 2013 at 7:42 am | Permalink

   Mike, your program saved me. I had two copies of my photos: one set on my computer and one set on my external drive that I use for back up. After having to reformat my computer (wiped out one set), I tried to use an automated backup program to return my photos to the computer hard drive. I clicked “backup” instead of “restore” and it wiped out my external drive (there went the second set) and ended up with nothing. At this point I didn’t freak out because I had known there are programs that rescue your deleted data… except when it found them, it put everything into one folder! I was horrified. After separating my documents and videos from my photos, I was left with 20 thousand photos in one folder. I knew that it would take an excruciatingly long time to sort my photos back into their original year/month directories. I knew that most of my photos had exif data, so I after a cursory search on Google I came across your program. What a relief! I’m not a programmer, so your program really saved me so much valuable time. I let your program run overnight and in the morning I found that only a thousand photos had no exif data. Mike, I just wanted to let you know that I donated money to you through PayPal. I never do that because I’m a teacher (photography is my job on the side) and I don’t make much money, but your program had some real value for me. I’m looking forward to see how your program develops and would like to know if you have thought about making a mailing list so that I can be updated when you make changes. Mike, keep up the good work, my friend!

6. John
   Posted February 15, 2013 at 5:14 pm | Permalink

   It works great, however is it possible to have it find / copy / move only *.jpg and *.nef files? It seems to find any file that might be an image file. I’d like to be able to copy ONLY *.jpg and *.nef (Nikon RAW format files).

   Thanks

   John

7. Mike
   Posted August 27, 2012 at 3:43 pm | Permalink

   PhotoMove will run fine in Windows 8. If you still have a problem, delete the program then re-install it with admin priveleges.

8. Faraz
   Posted August 27, 2012 at 3:31 pm | Permalink

   in windows 8 run this application as Administrator by right click on desktop icon else it give error

9. Mike
   Posted August 14, 2012 at 12:43 pm | Permalink

   Thanks for checking out PhotoMove. In answer to your questios:

   1) It will only move the 3,000 files that have exif data. The others won’t be touched.

   2) Sorry. This version won’t organize by month only. However, I’ve had a lot of requests for additional features and enhancements. I am planning on releasing a new version. I’ll posts updates here on the site in near future.

   Mike

10. Colorado Techie
    Posted August 14, 2012 at 11:08 am | Permalink

    Awesome Program… two questions:
    1) The program says it found 14,000 photos, but only 3,000 have EXIF data. I’m scared to click the “COPY” button because I don’t know what it is going to do with the 11,000 photos that don’t have EXIF data

    2) Instead of organizing my photos into days, I wanted to organize them into months. Do you have an option for organizing the photos into months?

    Thanks!

11. Mike
    Posted July 22, 2012 at 9:04 pm | Permalink

    Hi Marv,

    I sent you a more detailed answer by email, but here is the short story in case others have questions.

    If you MOVE files, and if the files you are moving contain exact duplicate files, (Exact duplicate means the file name and the exif date created are both exactly the same for each file), only one copy will remain in your destination directory after the move.

    In other words, if you have many duplicate copies of the same file on your hard drive, you can use PhotoMove to process the folders that contain the duplicate filse, and they will be sorted by date taken into the destination PhotoMove directory (folder) that you specify.

    If you edit your files (make changes to the original photo) and then save the file with the exact same original file name, and if, in the future, you put another copy of that same original photo on your hard drive, and then you decide to run PhotoMove on both these photos, they will both look the same to PhotoMove.

    Good practice when editing your photos is to save the edited or changed version under a new or different file name. There are two advantages of doing this. First, you still have a copy of your original image if you want to go back to it in the future, and secondly you won’t run into problems trying to figure out which copy of the image is the original and which is the edited version.

12. Marv
    Posted July 15, 2012 at 4:27 pm | Permalink

    Mike, I have not downloaded your program as yet. I have approximately 6000 separate images on three hard disks. Further, these images are replicated at least six times … so I have at least 36,000 images … may duplicates. Will your program recongnize it already has moved/copied that image and not replicate the move/copy? Further, if I have editted the image will it move/copy the original and the editted file so I have an organized nested set of images?

    Thank you,

    Marv

    PS … your reviews are excellent and your responses are quick and friendly … Great Job

13. Mike
    Posted May 11, 2012 at 11:52 pm | Permalink

    Thanks Brian!

    Glad it worked out for you!

    Regarding your questions about the total number of files the program will processs, I would have to say that the number would depend on your operating system and computer’s memory.

    If you try to process a large number of files at one time (many hundreds or thousands) the program can run for a long time. It can seem that your computer locks up, but it is just the program processing the large amount of files.

    If you have too many files and the program does not seem to work, move some of the files into a different folder and then work on a smaller batch of files at one time. Hope this helps.

    Thanks again,

    Mike

14. Brian
    Posted May 11, 2012 at 5:02 pm | Permalink

    Unbelievably awesome…I accidentally formatted my hard drive with all of our pictures. AFter I recovered them I relaized it may take a year or two to re-organize…not now. Awesome, just awesom.

    One question though, what is the highest number of pictures the program will process at once without crashing?

    Brian

15. Rob
    Posted March 10, 2012 at 6:33 pm | Permalink

    I have to say that Mike was most helpful. Thank you Mike. He suggested another tool (DropIt at http://dropit.sourceforge.net/) that fit the bill exactly. If you need help, ask Mike.

16. Mike
    Posted March 10, 2012 at 9:04 am | Permalink

    Hi Rob,

    I’m emailing you a reply. We’ll see what we can do.

    Thanks,

    Mike

17. Rob
    Posted March 10, 2012 at 8:57 am | Permalink

    We have an automated system that got away from us and created a large number of JPG files in need of organization (just as you describe by year, month, day).
    The problem is the exif dates are mixed up in these files so that modified date is actually creation date.
    It is possible to have a switch to pick modified date for the input?

18. David
    Posted January 11, 2012 at 4:18 pm | Permalink

    Nick,

    Great job. Thank you for making this available and the wonderful software you created!!!!

19. HLeXpert
    Posted November 21, 2011 at 4:50 pm | Permalink

    Amazing app! Works great! Even works with Nikon RAW format. I only wish it have more options for date format an so… GOOD JOB 5 star!!!

20. Mike
    Posted October 17, 2011 at 1:40 pm | Permalink

    Hi Nick,

    The PhotoMove program searches through all files in the specified directory and looks for valid exif information. If your CR2 files contain exif information in the format given in the Exif Standard then the program will also work on them. If you have files in CR2 (or any other proprietary RAW format for that matter) simply download PhotoMove and give it a try. You could test it by making a new folder and copying a few of your photo files into it. Then run the program.

    I’m sorry but I don’t have the ability to test the program on the hundreds of different proprietary formats put out by the various camera manufacturers. But as I stated above, many files (such as Microsoft Excel for example) contain Standard Exif data even though you might wonder why they do. Give it a try! PhotoMove doesn’t change or damage your files. If it doesn’t work, just delete the program. It won’t hurt my feelings.

    Mike

21. Nick
    Posted October 15, 2011 at 1:27 am | Permalink

    Most comments seem to be favourable although I have not yet downloaded and tried the prog, but……… will it sort in my case CR2 files, or any other raw files for that matter?
    It just seems a weakness with all these sort of progs

22. Mike
    Posted August 25, 2011 at 9:59 pm | Permalink

    I just wanted to reply to this comment because of it’s unusual nature.

    I really do appreciate all the hundreds of people who have downloaded and are using PhotoMove. Currently somewhere between 200 and 500 copies are downloaded every month. And the program has been stable for a long time.

    So I was a little surprised to see the above user comment about an install problem. All comments get immediately routed to my email so that I can respond if necessary. Since this one indicated there was a problem I wrote an email back explaining the options that he could try initially to sort things out. And then wrote out how he could contact me if he still had additional problems.

    It didn’t take a ‘long’ time to do this. But everything does take time doesn’t it?

    I hit the send button on my email to send my reply. Almost immediately the email was bounced back to me saying the user had provided a phony email address.

    I have never had anything like this happen before. I don’t know why someone would take the time to do this intentionally. So to the user that sent the email. (I don’t have your name because you entered the phony name ‘skip’ in the name field.) If you really do have a problem and if (by chance) you accidentally entered your email address incorrectly, please use the contact me page or post another comment with a valid name and email address so I can get in touch with you.

    I’d be happy to help you out.

    Mike

23. skip
    Posted August 25, 2011 at 7:05 pm | Permalink

    It looks like I am having only one problem.. [Balance Edited}

24. Nick
    Posted August 14, 2011 at 12:53 pm | Permalink

    Great little app. Very timesaving. Thanks very much

    Suggestion (may have already been made) to have an input which allows people to choose their own method of naming the folder e.g. yyyymmdd; yyyy-mm-dd; yyyy_mm_dd etc.

25. Hassan
    Posted July 20, 2011 at 10:21 am | Permalink

    Great application! I have a request, same thing exactly for video files “AVI & MOV” mostly, is it possible?

    Hassan

26. Mike
    Posted July 11, 2011 at 10:59 am | Permalink

    Thanks for the comment Sun. Your idea to (optionally) allow the user to specify their own file mask is a very good one. It will be included in the next revision.

    I appreciate your taking the time to give feedback!

    Thanks,

    Mike

27. Sun
    Posted July 11, 2011 at 10:53 am | Permalink

    Hi, thanks for the great program. I was hoping the dates would separated by dashes. Otherwise, a great GUI to exiftool. Suggestion for the future is to allow our own file mask.

28. Mike
    Posted June 18, 2011 at 3:53 pm | Permalink

    Hi Geoff, If the files are exact duplicates, they would be replaced.

29. Malcolm
    Posted May 23, 2011 at 2:59 am | Permalink

    It is amazing that this is the best I have found on the internet any where, I have a collection of 142Gb of photos – As i use my camera all the time, and like other comments here, not just one camera.
    Great work
    Thanks

30. Ove
    Posted May 19, 2011 at 6:32 pm | Permalink

    Still looking for an updated version of one ginormously helpful program Like I said on Xmas-eve last year, would be nice to choose your own archiving-method. I like the approach they have in Eye-Fi. I’ve set it up for yyyy_mm\yymmdd, they give the variables like this
    %Y_%m\%y%m%d. %Y and %y gives 4- or 2-digit year, m is month (2-digits), and d is day (2-digits). If something like this could be worked into PhotoMove I’d be very, very happy – and probably donate again I keep recommending this little gem to all those interested in photography !

31. Geoff
    Posted April 22, 2011 at 1:24 pm | Permalink

    Brilliant, simple program, thanks.

    What would happen if I attempted to move a whole load of files into a directory where I had already moved a whole load of files and duplicate file names existed (they would infact be duplicate files)? Would the files be renamed, replaced, or not moved?

    I would simply try but I could end up with even more chaos than I am already trying to sort out!

    Thanks again.

32. Alex
    Posted February 4, 2011 at 10:09 pm | Permalink

    Thanks very much for this small but time saving tool… definitively a must-have for who, like me, takes tons of pictures.

33. Ove
    Posted December 24, 2010 at 6:13 am | Permalink

    Almost forgot – Merry Christmas

34. Ove
    Posted December 24, 2010 at 6:12 am | Permalink

    Personally I really like this program as it sorts pretty much the way i do myself – EXCELLENT WORK and I’ve donated a few dollars to (hopefully) find an updated program sometime in 2011 (with all the new features I describe underneath

    In the future options 1 and 2 could you possibly add the features of choosing format of foldernames and if you want to move all files (or add your own extensions in the folders.

    Personally – since I’ve archived my pictures the same way since 2001 – I use this program to copy/move from my cameras memory cards, with new cameras now you also have video…and it’s not so fun to move them manually afterwards. I also like to sort my pictures in directories in yymmdd – makes them very easy to sort and to find chronologically + keeps the names compact. Just a little nitpicking on an otherwise exellent program

35. Tim
    Posted November 27, 2010 at 10:00 am | Permalink

    Excellent piece of software! Does what Picasa etc. should but don’t. Thanks.

36. Jason
    Posted October 10, 2010 at 4:58 pm | Permalink

    Oh my God!!! Thank you so much for making this. I have been manually sorting my pictures this way slowly and have been looking for something like this. Helped get my 20k picture library under control!

37. Andrew
    Posted February 6, 2010 at 4:55 am | Permalink

    Great work… saved me writing my own!

38. John
    Posted February 5, 2010 at 9:51 am | Permalink

    Does the job for sure! Thanks.

39. Glen
    Posted December 19, 2009 at 5:51 pm | Permalink

    Hi Mike,
    Very useful software. Nice and simple.
    I have one question in that when the program creates the directories at the day level it puts a space after the year but it doent do this at other levels. eg the monthly level wii be 2009/2009_10 but the day level will be 200/2009 _10_25.
    Is there any reason for this or have I installed it incorrectly?
    Thanks

40. Mike
    Posted September 6, 2009 at 9:11 pm | Permalink

    @Subhi,

    Thanks for the comment. Sounds like you had a lot of photos to sort.

    I did have an note in the post that current Microsoft and Adobe PDF files also have an embedded exif section and that these would be moved if they were included. I ‘bolded’ those sentences in the post so future users will have a better chance of seeing it before they use the program.

    For anyone who has a lot of photos to sort, I would suggest they move all the .jpgs to a temporary directory or folder before they start. Then you won’t have to worry about have other file types included. Then run PhotoMove and it’ll sort them all by date into new folders where you specify.

    Mike

41. Subhi S Hashwa
    Posted September 6, 2009 at 8:52 pm | Permalink

    Hi Mike.

    Great piece of software, it took a while to sort the pics I have (over 200k) but it did the job well.

    I found a bug in the software.
    It moves all files not just pictures, I had a directory with random unsorted files (word, PDF, excel) and it moved them all.

    Feature requests:
    Can you make the source code available? I am happy to attempt to update it.
    Log file option to undo things that could happen in the bug discovered above.
    Progress report/bar.

    Once again, many thanks for a great piece of software

    Subhi

42. Petros
    Posted July 29, 2009 at 4:46 am | Permalink

    Great application! Thank you for publishing it!

43. Sphfynktre
    Posted July 10, 2009 at 11:01 pm | Permalink

    You’re in the top 10 of my “small programs that I actually find really useful and well written”. My friend has thousands of photos of his family scattered all over his computer in no particular order or location. Each time he gets a new digital camera, the program that comes with it dumps into a different place… and now they can’t find anything. He guilted me into helping him organize them, so I’m glad I found your program. It was either spending hours and hours organizing, or hours and hours writing program of my own! Thank you so much. Very, very much.

44. Bernardo Fortes
    Posted May 26, 2009 at 4:00 pm | Permalink

    If we could choose the ammount of directory levels it would be very interesting…

    Year
    Year/month
    Year/month/day (current app)

    best regards,

45. Anonymous
    Posted May 9, 2009 at 2:09 pm | Permalink

    Hey Mike,
    Thanks for your tool. It placed my pics in subfolders in a blink of an eye on windows vista. Super!

46. Steve
    Posted May 9, 2009 at 6:48 am | Permalink

    Great Little proggie

    Is there a maximum number of files/photos that it can handle?

    Keep up the great work

    Steve

47. srinivas
    Posted March 2, 2009 at 9:11 am | Permalink

    Thanks, I have seen so many commercial phot organizers out there but they all this great feature. This is what everybody liks to have, organize based on the time line.

    Thank You for a great tool.

48. Ron
    Posted January 31, 2009 at 11:18 am | Permalink

    Looks like a superb program. Would it be possible to have a feature to “Include File Type” from a list so that you include only pictures, or clip art, or spreadsheets. etc?

49. Frank
    Posted January 22, 2009 at 4:37 pm | Permalink

    Mike you are a life saver. Great work and thanks for making this neat tool available!

50. Alper
    Posted January 4, 2009 at 9:03 am | Permalink

    Excellent tool. Thanks, it saved me ton of time. It seems to have a problem in processing multiple directories, but still very useful.

51. Mike
    Posted September 6, 2008 at 9:41 pm | Permalink

    stef:
    Thanks a million for the nice comments. Glad you found it useful.

    Dave:
    Modified program to only sort by month still coming! Probably the week after we get our first snow .

52. stef
    Posted September 6, 2008 at 11:24 am | Permalink

    Well what could I say except “thank you”. This small application does what it is expected to do. It’s years I was hoping to find such an easy to use functionality to sort my pictures. After automatically retouching image exposure of my 706 holidays pictures, it sorted my pictures within minutes. Thank you

53. Dave
    Posted August 10, 2008 at 4:19 am | Permalink

    Hey, Could you possibly make another version/option of the program that creates/sorts subfolders based on year and month instead of year month and day? I find year+month+day is creating far too many subfolders… If you do then please email me and i’ll try it out thanks