exiftool -d /media/drive_d/Photos/%Y_%d_%d "-directory

Interesting script, but using exiftool you can do all this in one command:

exiftool -d /media/drive_d/Photos/%Y_%d_%d "-directory<createdate" FILE

where FILE is one or more directory or file names. This will create directories that didn't exist too.

Also, you can write the "FileName" tag with a full path specification + file name if you want to rename the files at the same time that you move them.

Thank you both from the bottom of my heart for this script. It's a life savior for me as I need my pictures organized in folders with the same name as the date the picture was taken. I use to take pictures for weeks and months and just keep them on my 4GB camera SD card (the pictures are on the camera SD card in the DCIM/255CANON folder) before downloading them on my computer. Therefore, your script was most useful. I had to tweak the Peter Halmen's code a little, as my camera is mounted on variable .dvfs subfolders, depending on USB allocation by Ubuntu. In other words, each time I connect my Canon PowerShot S5 to the computer, Ubuntu mounts it on a .gvfs subfolder like "gphoto2 mount on usb%A100, 113", "gphoto2 mount on usb%A300, 116", etc. Since I cannot be sure what would be the name of that subfolder, I take it as a variable as such:

#!/bin/bash

# The directory where the photos are (inside my camera SD card)
SOURCE_DIR=".gvfs"$(ls .gvfs)"/DCIM/255CANON"

# The destination directory
DEST_DIR=Pictures

# The date pattern for the destination dir (see strftime)
DEST_DIR_PATTERN="%Y_%m_%d"

# Move all files having this extension
EXTENSION=JPG

find "$SOURCE_DIR" -iname "*.$EXTENSION" -type f | while read f
do
# Obtain the creation date from the EXIF tag
f_date=`exiftool "$f" -CreateDate -d $DEST_DIR_PATTERN | cut -d ':' -f 2 | sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'`;

# Construct and create the destination directory
f_dest_dir=$DEST_DIR/$f_date
if [ ! -d $f_dest_dir ]; then
echo "Creating directory $f_dest_dir"
mkdir $f_dest_dir
fi

mv "$f" "$f_dest_dir"
echo "Moved $f to $f_dest_dir"
done

Thank you SO much for this.

Razvan

I was looking for something just like this and it's been super-useful. Instead of organizing photos already on disk, I use it to transfer the pictures off the camera. Thanks!

One small improvement:

My Ubuntu (8.0.4) mounts my camera in /home/phamlen/.gvfs as something called "gphoto2 on usb%yadayada". The spaces in the file names makes the original find command break (because each word gets parsed instead of each filename. It's pretty easy to fix though; just change the for loop to a while loop and read the lines. Also, add quotes around $f in the move script. It looks something like:

find "$SOURCE_DIR" -iname "*.$EXTENSION" -type f | while read f
do
# Obtain the creation date from the EXIF tag
f_date=`exiftool "$f" -CreateDate -d $DEST_DIR_PATTERN | cut -d ':' -f 2 | sed -e 's/^[ \t]*//;s/[ \t]*$//'`;

# Construct and create the destination directory
f_dest_dir=$DEST_DIR/$f_date
if [ ! -d $f_dest_dir ]; then
echo "Creating directory $f_dest_dir"
mkdir $f_dest_dir
fi

mv "$f" "$f_dest_dir"
echo "Moved $f to $f_dest_dir"
done

Thanks again!

Hi,

I'm not sure if the book was translated in English or not. I've read the Romanian translation, but we get most of Pascal Bruckner's books over here. I've noticed he's not that popular in English speaking countries, though I really don't understand why - maybe it's just some bad media coverage.

However, I did find one of his other books - which is quite similar in theme and style - The Divine Child: A Novel of Prenatal Rebellion (Amazon link).

I hope it was useful.
Cristi

Thanks! I've been trying to figure this one out - exactly what I needed.

Errr ... well, it's not actually at the top of the list *smile* - I like to swap positions through it or just put other books at the front. Maybe it's down to the mood, since in my opinion, in order to enjoy a book you have to be in the right mood for it.

But be sure to come back to the blog *smile*!

Oh my god..

This is weird .... But it worked for me.

I was using the CalendarImpl in one file.. Removed it and everything started working magically.

A million thanks to Cristi.

Why is the error message so misleading.. Nokia guys please do something to atleast give the right error messages.

I spent more than a week to figure out what was going on.. tried all sorts of things including updating my phone's firmware.

Thank you for your comment and your suggestions. I haven't seen any of those two films that you mentioned, though the book by Stanislaw Lem, on which Solaris was based, was on my reading list for some time. Have you read it?

I really loved Strangers. It's been a while since I read it and now I am considering rereading it. It's a beautiful story - and it made me cry. Sorry ;) I've read two others of Yamada's novels, but this one is definitely special!

BTW You might like the movie Nobody knows, by Hirokazu Kore-eda a well ;) Or his other films :)

Hello Cristi,
I was reading you used flickraw and i am trying to use it too but I am having errors.
May you help me trying to understand what I am doing wrong?
Thank you in advance.
Best,
Jorge

Hi there...

Great little script, I needed it very much too. Modified it a bit, so it puts the pictures in /year/month/year_month_date..

Cheers!