A more detailed version of this article is available to those who sign up for a Free Membership.
Introduction
The method you use when gathering digital photos and videos from your clients’ Sources can have a significant impact on the outcome of your digital organizing project.
Expert-level digital organizing requires that all photos and videos are gathered from all your clients’ Sources while preserving folder structure.
Solutions and Methods Compared
These solutions and methods are commonly used by Professional Photo Organizers for gathering a client’s photos and videos from Sources:
• Picture Keeper Pro
• ThePhotoStick
• Searching with File Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac)
• Navigating folder structure with File Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac)
Also included is the method taught in the course Digital File Gathering and Filtering, which involves using the application Duplicate Cleaner Pro 5 (by Digital Volcano).
The Scorecard
Get the Whole Picture!
This article does not include full comparison information. A more detailed version of this article —for members only— covers aspects of file gathering that are overlooked by most professional photo organizers.
Sign up for a free Photo Organizing Stuff membership to access a more detailed article that includes information about the mystery scoring factors obscured in the chart below.
Green: 1 point
Gold: 1/2 point
Red: 0 points
Scoring Factors
Gathering All Photo and Video Extensions
All photos and videos should be gathered from your clients’ Sources.
However, not all file gathering solutions or methods can find and copy all the photo and video extensions that a client might have.
Preserving Folder Structure
Preserving Meaningful Information
Preserving a client’s story—their legacy—is only possible when all folder structure is preserved during file gathering. Otherwise, you may be throwing away important details of your client’s story.
Many people give folders meaningful names. If folder structure is preserved, words from those folder names can be added as Keywords to all the photos in the folder or included in filenames of videos.
Preserving Dates and Date Clues
Even if your client has not created meaningful folder names, keeping folder structure intact until late in the organizing process has many benefits.
Every digital collection I have organized has included between 5% and 20% Undated photos—photos lacking Snap Date metadata—and folder names often include dates or date information that can be used to add dates to Undated photos.
Improving Duplicate Removal Efficiency
If you use Duplicate Cleaner Pro 5 for duplicate removal, preserving all folder structure will help you to de-dupe a collection more efficiently because of the available settings and options related to folders and folder names.
The Mystery Factors
The mystery scoring factors obscured in the chart above will remain a mystery in this article!
Solutions and Methods Summaries
Duplicate Cleaner Pro 5 Method
Top Score!
The course Digital File Gathering and Filtering teaches a non-selective approach to file gathering, then leverages the power of Duplicate Cleaner Pro 5 (by Digital Volcano) to find and copy all photos and videos while preserving folder structure.
Non-selective file gathering is copying or downloading all folders and files your client
will allow you to copy or download from their Sources—not just photos and videos.
Why? Because you never know where you will find a client’s photos and videos. It’s not unusual for people to accidentally copy or move files and folders to the wrong location.
Once non-selective file gathering has been completed, Duplicate Cleaner Pro 5 is used to find and copy all photos and videos to a destination folder. And if you’re not sure what photo and video file extensions were gathered, Duplicate Cleaner Pro 5 conveniently displays a list of file extensions found.
The Digital File Gathering and Filtering course also includes detailed instructions for using searches and filters in Duplicate Cleaner Pro 5 to remove unwanted files, like video thumbnail images and album cover artwork.
The two mystery aspects of file gathering are handled beautifully by Duplicate Cleaner Pro 5.
Manual Copying of Folders
File Explorer (PC) or Finder (Mac) can be usedto navigate to and select folders that contain photos and /or videos.
If those folders are then copied, one level of folder structure will be preserved, but often, important information in folder names can be in multiple levels of folders. So, some information in folder names may be lost.
This is a very slow method—especially if the folder structure is deep and complex.
Search and Copy with File Explorer or Finder
File Explorer (PC) and Finder (Mac) both have a good search feature. Once can search for file type groups or individual file extensions.
When the photos and videos are copied from the search results, all folder structure is lost.
Picture Keeper Pro
Picture Keeper Pro gathers only common photo and video file extensions by default.
and if there are other photo or video file extensions in the collection, they must be entered manually in preferences.
If you do not know all the file extensions you need to gather, some files will be missed.
Picture Keeper Pro does preserve the folder structure when copying files.
ThePhotoStick
The list of photo file extensions ThePhotoStick will copy is very thorough, but that’s not the case for videos.
ThePhotoStick will only copyvideo files with certain extensions.If there are video files with extensions not compatible with ThePhotoStick, like .3GP, .AVI, and .MTS, those files will not be copied!
When files are copied using ThePhotoStick, the folder structure is preserved.