[Edvinas]

I decided to write a small utility to organize my files and turned out to be a fruitful project (there are already some excellent utilities but then they didn't met my requirements).

This simple utility (suggest a good name please) essentially reads the folders and organizes the files based on embedded EXIF/IPCT information and pattern specified by user. It can organize files in date-wise directories and/or rename the files based on various EXIF fields. It handles raw & XMP files and can delete duplicate if asked to. You can pass the pattern to control the renaming. It does also print basic focal length distribution from all the pictures it scanned – would love any suggestions to make it more useful. May be I will write more elaborated description in a day or two and post it here.

Sharing it here in case someone likes to give it a try (at your own risk off course ) Check it out and let me know what you think.

No offence, but why just not use exiftool?

[yusuf]

Exiftool is an excellent application but the purpose is entirely different. It's not meant for what I wanted to achieve. In fact, I came across couple of excellent software which can rename the files based on EXIF data (just Google, you will find many). However, I had a couple of simple but specific requirements which I was unable to get in a single tool, namely

- Ability to handle RAW (exiftool can do this)
- Custom control over how files are renamed and organized (exiftool does but does not move associated XMP file generated by ACR and this was important for me since I shoot raw and don't want to lose my edits in moving file)
- Proper handling of duplicate files. I frequently take partial backups and in the process I often ended up with having duplicate files. It even complicates when I inadvertently edit from two different locations. Worst part is when cameras create files with same name making blind deletion extremely risky and this does happens quite frequently. So I wanted to have utility to detect duplicate files and delete it. However, it should ensure that the files which are deleted are indeed identical in the content and not just the same name. In addition, it should be able to take care of XMP files (see next bullet) (exiftool doesn't do this)
- XMP files management –able to organize XMP along with associated RAW files and also able to handle duplicates. It becomes a bit complicated in case of duplicate because while deleting a duplicate file, another file need to be kept associated with the XMP file. (again exiftool doesn't)
- Can generate focal length chart, I know lightroom can do it but I do not have it.
- Should work on both Windows/Linux and should have the command line interface. I found a nice utility for Mac but I don’t have Mac

And since the requirements were simple enough, writing a new utility wasn't so difficult. And after analyzing for a long time, it was simple enough to write a new utility than to wrestle with multiple utilities for different jobs.

Hope that answers. Try it out if you haven't, hopefully you will like it.

[Edvinas]

Hope that answers. Try it out if you haven't, hopefully you will like it.

Sorry, I use Mac