What I’ve been using is either Capture One or Lightroom to import my photos, which does what I want (organize the photos into subfolders based on capture date). I want to wean myself off these apps and just focus on PhotoLab, hence the question in the title.
What I am looking for (and maybe it doesn’t exist) is a simple no-frills app that just takes photos off my SD card, and puts them into a subdirectory of my choosing, and lets me create a custom folder path based on EXIF capture data.
Example of what I want to specify on import:
Pictures > 2026 > 01 Jan
Capture One does this really well. I can make almost any combination of any of the basic EXIF data for folder and/or image naming. Lightroom does this okay but not great. It only has specific patterns that you have to subscribe to.
However, both Capture One and Lightroom are very large and involved apps to use just to import photos. Adobe Bridge is a considered alternative, but I just simply don’t want Creative Cloud bloating my computer anymore. And Bridge itself is a 3 GB app(?!)
Anyway, does anyone know anything like what I’m looking for? Or do I need to learn Swift coding and make it myself?
The best app is in your head and in your hands…
(stop worrying about manual labour and rethink your highly granular structure)
macOS provides the Digital Images and Fotos apps. Take care to set Fotos to NOT copy files to its catalog/database. But I usually just use the Finder to copy the DCIM folder etc. It’s either bloated software or manual labour. Using both adds the worst parts of both … so stick to Cap One (which is the most refined app imo)
I have done the Automator way some time ago, though I can’t find the Folder Action I had created. This did work for the most part, but it was sometimes a little buggy. I’ll take a look at Transnomio, thanks!
Tough pill to swallow, but I think you might be right. I’ve been spoon-fed for my almost my entire “photography life” with iPhoto/Aperture/Lightroom/Capture One etc., where I didn’t have to think about my files at all. Maybe it’s time I grow up
I do have to disagree with you here, that my structure is highly granular; one folder for each month is quite broad, actually, compared to many people’s folder structures that I’ve come across.
I prefer to use a different folder structure, one based on the event that I am photographing. If it’s a sporting event that runs over several days, I will create a new folder with a meaningful name and upload all the photos into that folder.
Totally makes sense for that type of work, and if that’s what I was doing, I’d do the same.
My “shoots” are sporadic taking of pictures around my house or the city. And I’m not organized or disciplined enough to commit to a subject-based folder structure either.
My “method” of handling my photos before PhotoLab was to open up the Lightroom “all photos” section (all photos from the entire catalog) and scroll until I found what I wanted – or didn’t, LOL.
At that time, my folder structure was the default that Lightroom uses where it creates a new folder for each capture date (i.e. YYYY-MM-DD).
Switching to YYYY/MM was the only compromise I could come up with so I don’t have a severe headache when looking for photos in PL.
What I am considering doing is YYYY/MM/{Subject or Event}, if there is one, and if not then the photos will just sit inside the parent MM folder.
You’re like me in that regard. Taking photos is not a project for me. It’s a hobby. I have some months where I’ve taken only 1 photo.
I use YYYY/MM (as mentioned in another thread) purely as a means of keeping any folder from ending up with many thousands of photos. If you want to be able to keep track of an event, well keywords can do that very easily. Even multi-day events.
I still use Lightroom Classic to ingest my photos because I use it for keywording. It’s a freebie, as it were. And I know you said you want rid of the bloat, but if it were just cost, you can use the Lightroom Library module without paying for a plan.
If you’re considering automation, take a look at Hazel from NoodleSoft. I bought it many, many years ago and it has been doing some things for so long I forget how I even did it. One of those things is auto-sorting certain folders. (Another is copying keywords across from Lightroom-exported files to Photolab-exported ones.)
I may just end up keeping LrC for all that you mention, as well. As nearly everyone here says: PL9 is pretty awful with respect to its DAM functionality, whereas LrC is quite great at it.
Yesterday I attempted to try out digiKam one more time, but it crashed on me about 4 times during my testing of it within the space of about 30 minutes. And on top of that, it’s just plain confusing to me! So it went in the trash bin again.
Organising folder structures can be challenging, depending on whether one uses keywords or not.
Imaging having a bunch of captures, taken at a certain occasion, of several objects and people. In order to find all images by name only, we’d need three dimensions plus one (maybe a four digit counter) to distinguish several takes - or another dimension.
We’ll get long names in a jiffy and then we’d also have to put that load into a digital shoebox or something with subfolders - one per … what dimension really?
Enter Keywords - and a decently capable and stable DAM. I do consider PL to be capable for basic and hierarchical keywords, but stability is a different story. For that, and as of now, we need a separate product. In my case, it’s Lightroom with its balanced mix of cost and features, but it’s a subscription - or free as @zkarj has been telling us for a while. Looks like an easy choice if we can overcome our dislike of Adobe or any other bloodsucker, that is.
None of the above means that our photos and metadata will be there and readable for good. A simple decision or technical advance introduced by any manufacturer can and our happiness. Chances are, that big fish live longer, though not indefinitely.
Bottom line: Look around, choose something and stick to it. Island hopping can be fun, but DAM hopping can be just that, dam hopping!
One of the reasons I stick with (camera-native) DNG files. At least Lightroom writes the metadata into the files. No sidecar files to manage is a bonus for me. Yes, there are .dop files a-plenty, but if I lose my edits, so be it. Just yesterday I was re-editing a photo that was published online as edited by… Lightroom? Luminar? Aperture? I don’t know. Whatever it was, I don’t have the edits anyway, just the old image as a reference. And… I might choose to do it differently now, anyway.
Indeed. I add a keyword that tells me what app the image was edited with, and I keep the .xmp and .dop files, or their equivalents where possible… and yet I find that when I do go back to an old image with newer tools, I still start over from the beginning and do it differently.
And to answer the original question (I’m late to the party), I use a shell script to copy from the SD card, rename to my date-based standard, make a backup copy, and then add to my DAM app, from where I open PL for 99% of them.
I do this all the time, too. Most of the time I edit photos only for fun, anyway. They’re not being used for anything special. So why worry about a past edit (especially if I at least already have an exported version of that edit)?
I am a long term low volume hobbyist with relatively minimal cataloging/import needs. I’ve used Aperture, then LR, then CO. I let Capture One get too many versions ahead of me and then no longer worked on my new MacBook Pro. So I started using Apple Photos for all of my basic needs and then the Nik Collection as stand alone editing tools or sometimes using CO on my old desk top when I needed more in depth editing.
Apple Photos suits my cataloging needs perfectly. I was very disappointed to find that PhotoLab could not access Photos file structure. This seems more of an Apple issue than a DxO problem but it does not look like it will ever be an option.
If PL could access Apple Photos file structure, along with key words etc, I would use Photos for importing and PL for everything else.
It is a shame that there isn’t a simple solution for those of us with modest needs.
I use Finder to import photos to my Mac. I organize my photo files by capture date, so I create a dated folder on my SSD and then, simply, drag the files from the memory card to the dated folder. This process is easy and fast. It also costs me nothing.
Added to that, the ability to use coloured and text Finder tags, and to use Spotlight to search on all sorts of metadata, I have never found much need to use a third party DAM.
And, since PhotoLab reads and treats files without the need for a “library”, the term “ingest” is somewhat superfluous.
This might be more than what you need, but I’ve used Photo Mechanic for years (available from Camera Bits). This program offers a basic as well as Plus version, which augments the basic importing and tagging capacities with a relational database for organizing, searching, and more….
Once you have the capacity to import, organize and extensively edit metadata, you might develop a more efficient workflow. And yes, PM interfaces well with any of the Post Processing software you’re likely to use.
Not an Apple issue at all. They are now owned by Apple, but even before that Pixelmator Pro and Photomator could freely access the Photos library. I was quite happy doing that with Photomator, because it also had a Finder view so I’d use that for my Z8 RAWs and the Photos library view for everything else. Now that I use DxO almost exclusively, I miss that integration.
Good to know. Maybe I’ll send in a request to DxO for this functionality but I doubt they will respond. It seems like a no-brainer for Mac users who don’t need extensive cataloging/library functions. I find Photos capability in that department more than meets my needs.
