One of the most overlooked aspects in computing is organizing files. If your photo albums are not organized correctly, every time you want to search for an image, you will need to dig around a lot of folders, sub folders and drives. It’s just a mess. The unnecessary clicks can cost you ample time and impact your productivity. Over time, your photo library will grow steadily and become disorganized.
Delete duplicate and similar photos using Similarity Threshold Bar for scanning. Organize photos by date using PictureEcho.
Benefits of Creating a Folder Structure
A date-time based folder structure will allow you to work with your images easily. It’ll make it easy to browse through different images, look for the images that were taken many years back, without much effort.
The idea behind creating a folder structure is to mimic the pattern of your work. For example, if you’re a photographer, it would be a good idea to create a new folder for each of your clients and then further divide them based on year, month and date. Such an ideal folder structure will make your files easily accessible and you will not lose track of your files even after many years of taking the photos.
Another idea is to split your photos by their nature/ type. There are so many image formats these days (.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .bmp, .gif, etc) that it becomes difficult to manage them and keep track of individual formats. Different image editors and processors support different image formats, so you may want to consider splitting these varying types of files into unique folders separately.
Keep in mind, there is no single approach to organizing your files. The approach may vary from person to person and their needs. However, you may need to be specific and consistent with your folder structure.
If you’re working in an organization, organizing your files in the correct way will help your colleagues to easily find them without much trouble. If the nature of your work requires certain images to be stored for a prolonged time, you may want to create a separate Archive folder for such files.
Automatically Build a Folder Structure & Re-Organize Your Images
Method 1: Organize Images by their Date Taken
Windows PowerShell allows you to manage a large number of files quickly and easily. Using PowerShell, you can create an entire folder structure based on the date taken. PowerShell does the job without user intervention.
$Source = “D:\MyFiles”
$Target = “C:\Users\%username%\Desktop\DestinationFolder”
Push-Location $Source
Get-ChildItem $Source -File |
Select-Object *,@{n=’YearMonth’;e={$_.CreationTime.ToString(‘yyyy\\MMM’)}} |
Group-Object YearMonth | ForEach-Object {
$NewFolder = Join-Path $Target $_.Name
If (!(Test-Path $NewFolder)){New-Item $NewFolder -ItemType Directory|Out-Null}
$_.Group | Copy-Item -Destination $NewFolder
}
Pop-Location
Method 2: Organize Images by their Modification Date
If you would like to store photos by their modification date instead of the date taken, you can use another command in PowerShell.
$Files = Get-ChildItem -Path “D:\MyFiles”
Foreach ($File in $Files) {
$File | Copy-Item -Destination “C:\Users\Vikas\Desktop\DestinationFolder\$( $File.LastWriteTime.Year )\$( $File.LastWriteTime.ToString(“MMM”) )”
}
Method 3: Automatically Create a Folder Structure Without Complex Commands (Recommended)
PictureEcho is the recommended way to create folder structures. The best feature about PictureEcho is that it doesn’t require knowledge about complex PowerShell commands.
You can download this program and get started easily with its nice and user-friendly appearance. Within minutes, you can re-organize hundreds of thousands of files without accidentally losing any data or messing with your system.
Here’s how to use PictureEcho:
- Install and open PictureEcho.
- Set the Scan Mode to Image Organizer.
- In the Organize by drop-down box, select a parameter to organize your files. You can organize your files by their creation date or modification date.
- In the subsequent drop-down box, set a date format (Year Month Day, Month Day Year or Day Month Year).
- In the Organize as drop-down box, select how you want to organize your files (Year/Month/Date, Year/Month or Year).
- Choose a task. Select Copy images to organize folders to copy all the organized images to the destination directory. Select Move images to organize folders to transfer all files to the target directory.
- Select a destination directory.
- Click on the Organize Images button to start the process.
PictureEcho Features:
- Fast, easy and secure.
- Photo organizer.
- PictureEcho is a specialized duplicate photos finder that lets you find duplicate photos and automatically take action with One-Click.
- Delete empty folders, sub-folders.
- Find duplicate images in Lightroom and Lightroom Classic catalogs.
- Scan by images and compare them individually.
- Cloud Scan: A complementary service that lets you find and remove duplicate files straight from your Web browser. You don’t need to download any of your files, which saves your time and bandwidth.
