Import preserving folder hierarchy

Hi all,
I have many (>100) folders (within folders) of photos on a harddisk which I would like to import into LR while preserving the folder hierarchy structure. Is there a way to import all folders at the same time while preserving the hierarchy or is the only way to import each and every folder one after the other.
Thanks, Bob

Hi Bob,
Just put 'em where you want 'em to be (if they're not already), then if you don't already have the root folder in Lightroom - import one photo from the top-level - that way you get the root folder created in Lightroom - even if its a fake photo just to get things going.
Then just do a folder-sync on the root - it'll get all of 'em in place. (hint: Right/Ctrl-click the root folder, then select 'Synchronize Folder' - I recommend not showing the import dialog box or you may be there all day...)
Rob

Similar Messages

Images import without folder hierarchy

I have many images organized in a hierarchy of folders. Importing images works, but the folders and albums are not being created. I narrowed focus to one folder with two subfolders containing a total of 8 images. Every import technique (including dragging the folder to project pane) results in a new project with all 8 pictures but no albums containing the two groups.
What am I doing wrong? I thought Aperture can import a folder hierarchy, with the lowest level folders (containing images) becoming Aperture albums.
MacBook Pro C2D 2 GB 17" Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Problem solved.
Aperture was not creating albums corresponding to Finder folders when importing by dragging a family of folders to Library in Projects pane.
Deleted "Aperture Library.aplibrary" in Pictures folder, cleared trash and restarted. Did not solve problem.
Next time, deleted Aperture library again and also deleted relevant plists:
~\Library\Preferences\.com.apple.Aperture.plist
~\Library\Application Support\Aperture\*.plist
Restarted. Ran yasu.app (general maintenance utility). Restarted Aperture.
Dragged my test folder group to Library in Projects pane. And I get two Albums! It works!
If you have this problem (no Albums on import), first try deleting only the plists in ~\Library\Application Support\Aperture, restart Aperture and try again. That may be sufficient.
Aperture does have a bad habit I consider a bug. If you open, say, the Import window, explore pull down menu choices, and "Cancel" out of the window, it still remembers the last setting before you canceled. And some setting in that exploration can disable album creation on import. I may be wrong about that detail, but anyway, I solved my problem.

Multiple files while preserving folder hierarchy

My problem: Over the past number of years I have been converting old VHS home videos to digital formats. My workflow has changed over time and this results in some file formats that are inefficient or not supported by many devices. The videos are in a special folder hierarchy that I would like to preserve.
I'm looking for something similar to Photoshop's Image Processor script.
I understand AME doesn't support scripting or command line interface. Is there any other way to accomplish what I wish to do? I have around 500 files at about 100GB and would prefer to not do things manually.

Hi Bob,
Just put 'em where you want 'em to be (if they're not already), then if you don't already have the root folder in Lightroom - import one photo from the top-level - that way you get the root folder created in Lightroom - even if its a fake photo just to get things going.
Then just do a folder-sync on the root - it'll get all of 'em in place. (hint: Right/Ctrl-click the root folder, then select 'Synchronize Folder' - I recommend not showing the import dialog box or you may be there all day...)
Rob

Support symbolic links (symlinks or Unix's 'ln -s') in the iTunes Media folder hierarchy

As of iTunes version 12.0.1.26, iTunes has partial support for symbolic links in the iTunes Media folder hierarchy. I'd like Apple to enhance iTunes to treat any symlink or folder alias within the hierarchy the same as folders. With the Unix core under OS X, there is no clear reason to not support this feature.
Why is this important? As more of us try to use iTunes as the single repository of all media, the library size becomes larger than is possible to hold on a single partition. The simplest and most convenient solution is to allow users to move large folders (e.g. Music, or Movies) to a different drive or partition, then put an alias or symlink in the original location within the iTunes hierarchy. Users with large collections or small partitions may need to split multiple times. Other users may want to put the bulk of their media on their home/work NAS and only keep a portion on their laptop for mobile access (think long overseas flights), but not have to constantly fiddle with iTunes.
The point is not whether any one of these scenarios may be supported today though a crude hack or third-party tool. Support for symlinks would be relatively easy for Apple to implement and extremely flexible for advanced users.
This is partially supported today. For example, if you do what I described above, iTunes will play all of your existing media. The part that is definitely broken is when you try to use the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder, iTunes will not copy the file to a location under a symlink or alias. The new file will sit in the "Automatically Add to iTunes" folder and iTunes will generate multiple instances/tracks inside iTunes (e.g. movies appear in the "Unwatched" tab). While there are ways to work around this limitation, they are tedious and ultimately unnecessary if full symlink/alias support is provided.
Best,
Pete

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Can I import a "folder tree" into an "album tree"?

I have organized a large set of photos on my PC into a nice "directory tree" or hierarchy of nested folders. The nesting structure makes sense since there is a clear hierarchical relationship amongst the photos, and there are so many of them. Viewing them is easy on my PC - I just navigate the folder structure and go into "Picture Viewer" in each folder to see all the pictures on a particlar topic.
Now, I want to do this on my Mac. Since we lack a "Picture Viewer" function in the iMac world (unless I go look for a freeware one), I am wondering if iPhoto can hold this kind of structure. Basically, albums within albums. I've tried to create a new one and move it inside an existing one and it doesn't seem to like that. Is one level the best iPhoto can do? If so, that is pathetic. The world is more complex than that. I am using iPhoto 2.0.1.
If it is possible, my extra credit question for whoever tackles this is "can I import the folder structure into iPhoto and keep the nested structure as a tree of albums?". Thanks.

iPhoto is for people who want a one-app solution for managing all their photos, preparing photo books, ordering prints, and preparing slide shows, and who are satisfied with two levels of storage hierarchy and very limited image editing options. This mostly means family snapshooters. You have a very primitive early version of iPhoto which was bundled at no cost with consumer Macs in its day. iPhoto 6 in particular offers much more organizational flexibility than previous versions, but it's by no means a professional photographer's tool.
I have nearly 100,000 photos stored on my computers. About 10,000 of them are in eight different iPhoto libraries. The best of my own work and my archives of historical photos are stored in folder hierarchies of my own design, not in iPhoto libraries, and I edit and sort them and prepare prints and presentations using them in Photoshop CS2, Adobe Bridge, GraphicConverter, ViewIt, and occasionally other apps.

Export All images with Folder Hierarchy?

Hi,
I use Lightroom all the time but would like to have all my photos available on my Iphone but it is not compatible with raw files. Is there a way that I could export all my images but keep their folder hierarchy intact so I would end up with a duplicate set of folders the same as I have in lightroom but the new set would only contain jpegs?
Thanks
Matt

I do just that with a free tool that has been published on "another" forum.
I'm not so sure if I can put th elink down here, but search for
Preserving Folder Tree Hierarchy using Export Plugins in 2.0
and you'll find a solution. Read the thread to the end, there are a number of improvement that never got into the "official" release.
Cheers, Peter

Mirror folder hierarchy

Hi,
I want my CWS to mirror the source repository structure. I used the DB CWS example to start my development. When I created a crawler, I never see the option to "Mirror folder hierarchy" or "Import security...". Is there something that I should changed?
Thanks

Hi Syuroff,
     In this case, you should use the root as /Volumes/Drive2/AUSST_Updates/updates/oobe and the url you need to specify should point to this location. For example if http://serverx:8080 points to /Volumes/Drive2/AUSST_Updates then you need to specify the url as http://serverx:8080/updates/oobe. If you allow directory browsing, then you can verify that the URL http://serverx:8080/updates/oobe points to /Volumes/Drive2/AUSST_Updates/updates/oobe. Once you ensure this, you have to run
AdobeUpdateServerSetupToolCS5 --root="/Volumes/Drive2/AUSST_Updates/updates/oobe"
and select appropriate option to sync with Adobe Update Server. Once this step is completed, you will see two folders namely updates and webfeed created under /Volumes/Drive2/AUSST_Updates/updates/oobe location. Now you can run another command to generate the client config file:
AdobeUpdateServerSetupTool2.0 --genclientconf="/Volumes/Drive2/AUSST_Updates/updates/oobe/config"
                                                       --root="/Volumes/Drive2/AUSST_Updates/updates/oobe"
                                                       --url="http://serverx:8080/updates/oobe"
As mentioned in my earlier post, this command will create a folder named config under /Volumes/Drive2/AUSST_Updates/updates/oobe/config
location. This folder will contain all the override files for both Mac and Windows.
Let me know if this answers your query.
Thanks,
Abhishek | [email protected]

Export: Maintain Folder Hierarchy -

it would be very useful if lightroom could export a group of images maintaining the existing folder hierarchy, instead of dumping them all into one folder -
as in, i import my images into lightroom, sort the images into subfolders, put them through develop (or not), then when choosing export i have an option to create a new folder containing the exported images arranged in the same folder structure as in lightroom
(then i upload these images to a php gallery system that creates thumbs, gallery page, etc)
it would be great if i didn't have to re-organize the exported images after exporting...

Going with Jeff's one feature, don't mix it rule:
The ability to export our collection and folder hierarchy would be a very useful tool. It would allows users to create final output copies of our images in what their normal relational folder location. A bank of collections that contain the output from a job may contain numerous collections of virtual copies of Colour/B&W/Sepia/bordered images to go for proofing to clients. The client could peruse these by type and make decisions based on these. It is especially useful in the case of burning out our exports to create a usable hierarchy on the disk. Otherwise Lightroom can only be used to export all images to one folder, or used to export individual collections, that must then be hand sorted into our hierarchy and burned from an external application. As Lightroom is designed to speed our workflow, this would be a very useful addition to the toolset.

Preserving Folder Structure when Exporting?--A question

A very simple need that I have: I have a Folder in IPhoto on my laptop, left over from a recent trip. The Folder is organized into ten "Albums, which are trip segments. All I want to do is to Export [or Copy] this Folder on an external hard drive, for security purposes and to Import the Folder [and Albums] into IPhoto on my primary desktop computer.
I can export all the contents of the Folder, but I have struggled to find a way to do this that preserves the organization of the Albums inside the Folder. What I end up with is all 652 photos [in this example] in one huge sequential order.
Please advise what I can do to export and maintain the Folder structure. Thanks!!

Welcome to the Apple Discussions. You can connect the two computers so that the iPhoto Library on each can be accessed by the paid version of iPhoto Library Manager (residing on one of the two Macs) and then copy the albums or events, including keywords, descriptions and titles from the laptop library to the desktop Mac.
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto (iPhoto.Library for iPhoto 5 and earlier) database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger or later), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 6 and 7 libraries and Tiger and Leopard. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.≤br>
Note: There now an Automator backup application for iPhoto 5 that will work with Tiger or Leopard.

Preserve folder structure when exporting JPGs?

Is there a way to preserve the folder structure of a catalog when exporting JPGs of everything to a new location? I know there is an option to save the export into the same folder as the original file, but i am talking about a completely new location. That would be really helpful.

Lightroom doesn't support it directly. However, try this plug-in http://photographers-toolbox.com/blog/2009/06/exporting-a-folder-hierarchy-from-lightroom- lrtreeexporter-released/

Using Lightroom with existing folder hierarchy?

Hello,
What would the recommended work-flow be for using a Lightroom with an existing folder hierarchy? (mix of raw and Jpeg)
Other imaging programs rely on the directory structure, and it is occasionally reorganized.
Basically, in Lightroom I'd like to be able to navigate to the images i want via the directory tree, or a via custom lightroom "collection / group" for specific events, etc.
Thanks for any idea,
David

If files are added or moved into the folder tree, you have to tell Lightroom to look again for new files for each folder. Lightroom currently has only one "watched" folder.
It is not a file browser for files that are not in its catalog.
If you want to use it as a catalog, then you may not want files to appear in there without your knowledge or action on your part, which may be why Lightroom doesn't currently include more "watched" folders. When you do ask it to check for new files, the first thing it shows you is that import so you can deal with those new files without being confused by the rest of the files in that folder.
Reading your initial post, you said you want to "navigate" the images and mention collections. I suggest you spend some time thinking about how you are going to tag your images in Lightroom. Lightroom can be very helpful for cataloging your images because there are many metadata fields you can use to help you find images later.
You mentioned events. I want to be able to find trips we take not only by the directory I put them in but also from metadata. One reason I moved from Elements is they didn't have any way but collections to use for this. I didn't care for collections to be used this way for several reasons, one of which is "collections" are entirely in the program, whereas metadata can be permanently saved for use outside of the current program you are using.
I selected the IPTC "Job Identifier" field to identify groups of photos I may want to find together such as trips, workshops, events. I generally fill out caption, keywords, and the various location fields. I created my own metadata preset to make it easy to fill out the fields I generally use.

Lightroom won't import a folder of jpg's

I tried to import a folder of jpgs on my Mac. It successfully imported about 175 and then just stopped (but I've got about 5,000+ photos). It will no longer import a single photo. How do I find the offending photo so I can resume my imports. I told it to move photos so all photos left in the folder are new to Lightroom. If I deselect the first photo and try to import the rest.. I get the same problem. Thanks.

Thanks Dorin!!
you were correct! I didn't notice the rather hard to see icon on the one image shown which is displayed when a group of images are stacked together.
Simply unstacking the stack resulted in LR displaying all 1000+ images that were in the stack. How they got put into a stack in the first palce remains a mystery.
Ron

Can Aperture not be set up to show a "Last Import" smart folder?

I'm trying to make the transfer from using iPhoto to using Aperture.
One thing I found really great in iPhoto was the smart folder that was simply set to show the last import, no matter when that import was done - whether it was today, yesterday or 6 months ago.
The reason I found this so handy was because I set my iPad up in iTunes to only sync the photos from that Last Import smart folder, rather than all my photos.
That way, every time I synced my iPad, I always had my most recent photos on my iPad, no matter when the pictures were taken.
Now with Aperture, I cannot see a way to create anything similar. The best I can do is to create a smart folder with photos imported within the last month, let's say.
But the problem with that is that if I haven't imported any new photos for over a month, then the next time I sync my iPad, then all my photos will no longer be on the iPad.
If I create a longer timeframe, to let's say 3 months, then I might end up with way too many photos trying to sync across, and that's something I don't want. I could end up with hundreds and hundreds of photos, and I don't have the free space to be able to do this!
When I used "Last Import" with iPhoto, then I always only had around 50 or 60 photos, because that's just generally how many I usually imported at any one time. Sometimes it was more, sometimes less, but the average worked for me.
So to sum up: Can Aperture not be set up to show a "Last Import" smart folder, regardless of date?
Or alternatively, is there any way I could "hack" or "trick" Aperture into doing something like this so that I always have a managable amount of the most recent photos on my iPad?

Hello Brett,
that does not seem to be an easy probem as you discovered.
Some Workarounds:
You might to use a smart album rule "Import session is" instead of a date range, but that will not be automatic.
Create a folder "recently added" and keep your recent projects inside that folder; create a smart album at the top level of that folder; move older projects somewhere else.
Or enable the Photo Stream - that is the current replacement for the "most recently added" album; it will (is supposed to) always show the most recent 1000 images.
If you are familiar with AppleScript, you can make Aperture run an AppleScript on import (Import Settings) to add your imported image to an album of new images. From time to time remove the older images.
Sorry, but no really convenient way to do it..
Regards
Léonie

When I try to import a folder of jpeg files into iPhoto, only some are imported. I get the message "The following files could not be imported. (The file is in an unrecognized format.)" I am running iPhoto '09 ver. 8.1.2 on OSX 10.5.8. They are all RGB.

When I try to import a folder of jpeg files into iPhoto, only some are imported. I get the message "The following files could not be imported. (The file is in an unrecognized format.)" I am running iPhoto '09 ver. 8.1.2 on OSX 10.5.8. They are all RGB.

As a Test:
Hold down the option (or alt) key and launch iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Create Library'
Import a few pics into this new, blank library. Is the Problem repeated there?

When I import a folder into my library, music starts playing and I can't stop it.

So, I haven't used iTunes in years.
I'm just wondering if this is the same for everyone, of if I've just done something wrong.
Brand new install of the latest version of iTunes (11.3.1) - Open it up, use the "Import folder" option to import a folder into my library.
It's a large (over 200gb) folder.
As it's importing, for some reason, iTunes starts to play the first few seconds of each album that gets imported.
But, because the "Importing.." dialogue window is open, I can't hit "pause" or "stop".
So, my computer is just sitting here playing the first few seconds of many many songs whilst importing. I can turn down the volume to stop it, but I'm just wondering -
Is this normal? Seems a little odd and strange.

Generally setting a common Album Artist will fix things.
For deeper problems see Grouping tracks into albums.
tt2

Import preserving folder hierarchy

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