JohnFrim Loc: Somewhere in the Great White North.

I have mentioned some of this before but will restate part of it here since it is pertinent to this thread.

I am a bit (OK, a lot) OCD with my photos, but I don't ever (intentionally, anyway) delete an image file. To me they are the negatives and they should ALL be there, never to be destroyed (I don't take the kinds of photos for which some folks would pay big bucks to have the negatives destroyed :? ). They are my ultimate backup if I ever have to go back to an original.

I do not import from the SD card into any kind of photo management and/or processing software directly. I want to manage my library using the OS so that I am not tied to software that may or may not be supported in the future. Therefore, I copy all images into folders using the Finder on the Mac. Parent folders are used to separate images taken by different cameras. Within those my folders are all identified by the starting-ending numbers of the image files in the folder, a short description of the content/event/activity, and the month/year. This way my folders (and photos within) are all filed chronologically and easy to find from the descriptive folder title. I can search visually or by computer for 'relevant words' that are in the folder name (I also add descriptive words to the image file name after the camera-assigned image number, but that's a different discussion.)

I am just now in the process of "importing" all of these image files into the Photos application, but I wanted to be sure I had everything in proper order before doing that. I already had many of my images in iPhoto, but I wanted to do an 'audit' before committing it all to the new Photos app. So, I created an Automator workflow to copy folder names and image file names into Excel where I do error checking on the data. Excel does text extraction/manipulation/analyses to verify that: 1) all image numbers are accounted for in the folder label (i.e., the first number in a folder name is 1 higher than the second number in the previous folder name); and 2) that the number of image files in the folder matches the number of images expected based on the difference between the numbers I used in the folder name. Any discrepancies are highlighted automatically so that I know exactly which image file number is missing. I can then search the computer for that missing image file number in case I inadvertently moved (instead of copied) an image to some other folder on the computer.

I just finished checking all of my Sony images last night (I still have to do my older Pentax and Fuji image files from a backup drive) and out of 26,820 images I am only missing 8 pictures. And yes, my last image in my Sony at this very moment is 6820 (I add the ten-thousands digit to my downloaded images using a different Automator workflow). I know in my early days with the camera I DID delete a few photos that I thought were bad, and I have had an occasional error with the camera jamming up that caused me to skip/lose an image. But I have a good feeling right now that my image managing approach is working well for me.

If anyone is interested in my approach, my Automator routines, or my Excel workbook I would be happy to share; just send me a PM.

bcrawf

John, very tight procedure. Thanks for the details. I do the same offload from my camera card to folders, then I import to iPhoto (or now to "Photos"), but I first view and cull my images using Preview (Mac system software), writing the numbers to delete. In my camera work, I very often try to get an improved shot (and sometimes just an "insurance" shot for focus or movement backup), so I have lots of images to discard. Once I delete my cull items, the images go into my folders (labelled by date of download). I then import to "Photos" and pick out a few images to add a keyword or phrase to help me find images later. Additional designations (such as flagging or making an album) get used, too.