ChrisAnn
Junior Forum Member
Posts: 220 
Open to constructive criticism of photos: Yes
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Post by ChrisAnn on Feb 3, 2022 10:02:03 GMT
I have 44,400 photos in my Catalogue, all jpegs, the majority of them stored on an external drive. Every one is catalogued via the Organiser. I am looking at each individual photo and deciding whether to keep or delete it. Apart from those in 2021 the others are in year folders on the external drive. I'm using the My Folders column to the left of the Organiser to find the photo by date order within the year's folder. It worked well on the C:Drive but now that I'm working on the external drive and decide to delete a photo I generally find (not every time) that the organiser goes back to the last photo of the year so I have to scroll back to find where I was up to. When it works well and just goes back to the previous photo I've done precisely the same actions as when it doesn't. I can't fathom why this is the case.
My second associated problem is: Occasionally I decide a photo needs editing so do that in the Editor, saving after editing and specifying that the saved version should replace the earlier version. I go back to the Organiser and find that the original version is still visible. I'd assumed it was just a computer delay due to the external drive but all edited files are visible in a duplicate year folder ie I have two 2019 folders according to My Folders. I can't move these edited photos back into the correct folder (where the original version is still visible). The second 'folder' seems to be a phantom one as it isn't visible through File Explorer. I suppose it doesn't really matter but I do like everything to be ordered, hence using the Organiser since 2003 when I first purchased it.
Any advice or explanation welcomed.
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Post by michelb on Feb 3, 2022 14:09:08 GMT
For your first deleting issue, two or three tips: - Don't delete each file immediately, find a way to mark that file as 'to be deleted' and batch delete those files later on. - In your browsing search for culling, insure that you are pre-selecting files with a narrower interval than years, for instance by month. - consider using alternative browsing solutions for culling, especially the 'full screen view, shortcut F11' or even external solutions like Faststone, necessarily followed by a search for missing files later in the organizer.
I have found that it may be faster to use the show/hide function rather than assigning a 'to be deleted' keyword. You start without any hidden files and you hide or show each file. After your session, it's easy to review the resuling selection and to batch delete it. The F11 full view lets you browse easily provided you start with a reasonable size selection. The external culling via a browsing external software like Faststone is quite possible: once you reopen the organizer, you select the missing files and batch delete them all. Be sure not to have any missing files before culling!
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Post by BuckSkin on Feb 3, 2022 14:46:46 GMT
FastStone is your friend !
A suggestion: if space is your concern, get another external HDD and, instead of deleting the files, move them to a folder on the external "Culls"; if space is not a problem, create this folder on your existing disk.
This is sort of a non-so-permanent Recycle Bin where you can then look things over and decide for certain whether to permanently delete or not.
FastStone has a really quick tagging feature; not to be confused with keyword tagging, this feature simply flags the chosen photos; pressing"Q" tags or untags the photos, either singly or all selected.
Once tagged/flagged, you can go to the Tags menu and choose several options, including "Select Tagged Files", "Select Untagged Files", and "Show Only Tagged Files"
Armed thus, you can pick and choose and then move the whole selected batch at one fell swoop.
You can use the Batch Rename feature (under Tools) to append "_Cull" or "_DELETE" or whatever to a whole selection of files.
In the Rename template, the Asterisk/Star symbol "*" = the existing file name; so, typing *_Cull would append _Cull to the file names.
Before any mass deleting session, I would investigate and empty the Recycle Bin; thus, any mistakes you make will not be lost among ten thousand other possible mistakes.
Of course you already know this; anything in the Recycle Bin is still taking up space where it initially resided.
I try to always rename anything I delete with something that makes me know at a glance that I indeed meant for it to be deleted, either by adding _DELETE or a string of xxxxxx, or whatever to the end of the file name; thus when I empty the Recycle Bin, I am reassured that I am not tossing away something I will miss later.
I hope this is of benefit to your task at hand.
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ChrisAnn
Junior Forum Member
Posts: 220
Open to constructive criticism of photos: Yes
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Post by ChrisAnn on Feb 3, 2022 16:25:09 GMT
Thank you very much for both of your recommendations. I shall use each one and work out which system I feel most happy with. I've just deleted over 1,000 photos from today's work and have just finished with 2019 having started at 2022 - there's still a long long way to go so plenty of options to practice on. I'm horrified at the number of near duplications I have however from a distance I am able to make a choice and cull the rejections with my head rather than keep them all, which is what my heart keeps telling me to do.  |
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