How to go from date organized to folder organized

[fonsw95897590]

Hi, I am new here, and new on Lightroom.

It works great, already did a lot of fancy stuff with it.. And now.. it's time to organize all those thousands of pictures.. I first imported them all by date.. and now i realize that it works much better for me to organize in a folder based structure.. I don't see how to get there..

When i ad a folder under all the years.. then it's not possible to drag photo's into this folder.. cause off course it's allready organized per date.

So is it possible first.. to put all photo's in one folder and forget the date organized organisation and then to ad folders and click and drag??

Basics of the basics.. but oh.. i can't seem to figure it out..

Thanks!

- the only thing what seems to work is to do this in finder. There i can drag pictures to another folder.. but i've learned to only organize In Lightroom itself???

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

I first imported them all by date.. and now i realize that it works much better for me to organize in a folder based structure.. I don't see how to get there..

I suggest leaving the folders by date, and using keywords and other metadata (captions, titles, GPS locations, etc.) to organize and search. Keywords and other metadata are more flexible and powerful than anything you could come up with using folder. On of the zillions of advantages of keywords and other metadata is that while a photo can be in a single folder, photos can have multiple keywords and huge amounts of other data assigned to them if needed. If you took a photo of your family on vacation, does it go in the family folder or the vacation folder (or the summer folder)? With keywords, you can assign the photo to all of these.

Do not go down the path of rearranging your folders as a way to be better organized. Use the keywords and other metadata.

[fonsw95897590]

THanks for your response.

But what if.....

I made a mess of it.. or rephrase.. it became a mess cause i dragged photo's from one place to another, so the metadata, the actual dates (datestamps) .. of photo's is totally wrong. In other words.. the dates of the photo's are not usefull anymore..

Photo's made in 2016 are now under 2008 and vice versa.

[dj_paige]

"what if ..."

Does this mean you are asking about a hypothetical future event that hasn't happened? Then just don't move photos or folders from one place to another. I never do.

But ... if you mean you have already done this ... (is that what you mean?) ... my answer is that you shouldn't care. Don't worry about it. In Lightroom, using the filter bar, it is extremely easy to find all photos taken in 2016, even if the photo is in the "wrong" folder.

[fonsw95897590]

Thanks, i will do that.. better and better i understand lightroom..

With what if i ment that i already happened yes. I already made a mess of it..

But that is what i will do, thank you!

[fonsw95897590]

Actually....

i am not satisfied with this...

I am already trying to move the whole folder of lightroom somewhere else to have a clean start to import all over again, this time not date oriented.

Is there no way to just put every thing in one big folder, and forget about the date oriented organization??

Sorry to bother you again.. 😉

[dj_paige]

Again, I think this is a very sub-optimal decision.

If you are going to start over, then start over by adding keywords and other metadata to your photos instead of moving them into different folders.

Putting everything in one big folder (as opposed to a parent folder with many subfolders) is also a bad idea, your operating system will slow down whenever you have to access this folder, similarly Lightroom will slow down when you try to access this folder.

[ManiacJoe]

Organizing by date is still the better way to organize your files on the hard disk.

Inside of Lightroom, you can use Collection Sets or organize your images into hierarchies that make more sense for you.