Hi all!
I remember seeing a hazel workflow to organize images by year/month/dates. I wonder if anyone can help me find it. My image files are located in my external hard drive in separate folders and subfolders, possibly including several duplicates. I want to organize it properly and then backup to google photos. I tried building the workflow myself but hazel doesn’t find images in all subfolders and ends up renaming the subfolders…
As far as I know, Hazel only works on one folder at a time and does not go down into subfolders. And as for Hazel renaming the subfolders, it only does what you tell it to do. Hazel won’t rename folders unless your rules say so.
I use Hazel a lot, but I would not consider Hazel first for this sort of work. Perhaps instead get all your photos into Apple Photos and make some Smart Albums using the rules that apps provide to then move into the new structure you want. Or perhaps Google photos can do that also for you–been a long time since I looked at that app.
Some time ago I had a problem with Apple Photos and had to remove the originals folder from the Photos Library.photoslibrary file. All my photos were there but they had been renamed to something like
4A90DF1A-CADE-426F-432A-B2D8840Z9D4B.heic
I moved all the images to a single folder then renamed them with ExifRenamer.app. I thought you might find it useful.
https://thesweetsetup.com/quick-tip-rename-your-photos-based-on-exif-metadata/
Are the subfolders there for a special purpose?
Otherwise I would move all photos into the Mainfolder, and then do there, what I want to do with them.
Thanks! I realize what I was missing. There are over a hundred thousand photos scattered across folders, some nested. I will rethink this.
This is indeed helpful, thanks
They are gathered over many years from different devices at different times.
You can set Hazel to only act on files that aren’t folders, and you can also make it act recursively into subfolders:
Help article
I think this a fine tool for this job, but it also has potential to go wrong if your settings are off!
Work on a copy…
I’m trying to get the recursive part working 