Organize photos by exif data?

[wildman]

Would like to sort and than file pics by exif data such as ISO, aperture etc.

I have a program now that sorts and displays this info (EXif Pilot) but I can't do anything with it but look at it. That is I can't drag and drop these files into a directory that holds, say, only pics taken at an ISO of 100 for instance.

Any ideas?

Wildman

[Wheatfield]

I think Lightroom can do this.

[Nowhere Matt]

I guess you could always make dupicates and file them in a folder accordingly. That way you could sit around realizing how often you shoot at "X" settings compared to "Y" settings. And also catalog the lens you use most often, time of day comparisons, etc..

You are a wildman with this fastidius data compilations.

Just kidding. Someone will come along soon with much more sound and reasonable knowledge and offerings. (and here's another clue for you all) I am just some other jackass.

[Venturi]

Yep. The Smart Collections in Lightroom2 are rather awesome. I would suggest downloading a trial version and then going through the Getting Started tutorials.
A little warning though - once you learn a little you're gonna be hooked, so plan to budget for it.

[Jim Royal]

The most powerful way to organize raw files by EXIF data is the command-line program exiftool.

I used exiftool to reorganize my Lightroom catalogue. I had about 4000 shots which were organized into a subject-based hierarchy of folders. I decided that I would prefer the organization of the photos to be date-based, and I would use keywording to create subject-based collections.

So how to reorganize 4000 photos in a reasonable amount of time?

Using exiftool, I was able to use a single command that read the EXIF data in each individual file, create a new folder structure based on that information, and move the files one by one into the new folder structure. It took my about half an hour to grasp exiftool's command structure, and the process itself took minutes. I then re-synced my Lightroom catalogue, and all was good (except that my stacks disappeared).

See the exiftool web site.

[Marc Sabatella]

A photo management program like Lightroom, or ACDSee, or probably any number of others, would allow you do this easily enough. Heck, I'll bet even Picasa or Windows Photo Gallery could do it. But these sort of programs also make it kind of unnecessary to think in those terms. Given that they can, with a single click, show you all your ISO 100 pictures regardless of where they live on your drive, why bother moving them around? One of the most important features of any decent photo management programs is that you don't *have* to move your files around physically in order to group them logically - the program can create or generate "virtual" collections just as easily.

[Canada_Rockies]

Originally Posted by wildman

Would like to sort and than file pics by exif data such as ISO, aperture etc.

I have a program now that sorts and displays this info (EXif Pilot) but I can't do anything with it but look at it. That is I can't drag and drop these files into a directory that holds, say, only pics taken at an ISO of 100 for instance.

Any ideas?

Wildman

I use Lightroom for this sort of thing. You can filter by the EXIF data, or even create categories. The one image could be in any number of categories at the same time. One image I took a year ago for example was of the river near my home. I use filters and can find it by "DA 12-24 f/4", Elk River, 12mm, and so on. I could create a category DA 12-24 and assign all the images taken with the lens to that category. I could also assign it to Scenic, Elk River, Landscape, Back lit (it is), and whatever else I like.

[wildman]

OK.

Been doing a bit of research myself.

First of all I was not very clear about what I wanted to do in my OP.

I do not want to completely organize my photo collection. What I wanted to do is take a day or two of shooting and sort them according to certain values such as ISO. or if D range or SR is on or off and compare them to see what works and what doesn't. When I'm in the field shooting I'm constantly fine tuning my settings to try and optimize them for a particular situation and hardware configuration.

When I get home I don't remember exactly which frames were set which way so it's nice to be able to sort them out and then see with my own eyes if, for instance the frames that use SR is any better than the frames without it. That sort of thing.

Anyway I've got PhotoME, ExifPro, Exif, and Lightroom installed.

Photome pretty much shows all Exif data but only one file at a time so I can't sort on anything.

ExifPro does pretty much what I want but only shows basic Exif data. It's also a complete file management system.

Exif is like ExifPro without the file management system. This works best for me. It searches down through all subfolders and neatly lists them in a column form that I can sort on.

Lightroom, as far as I can tell is not suited to my purposes. It does not list files in a columns and only shows the most basic Exif data. Perhaps it could be set up better but after an hour of messing with it I couldn't figure out how to make it do what I want it to do. It seems like a very clumsy over complex program for my purposes.

So for the time being the best I have found is a simple 500kb freeware program called Exif. For anyone interested it's here:

Exif Image Viewer

Thanks for your suggestions,

Wildman