Move files based on XMP rating?

[Talkiet]

I currently use a program called PIXORT for sorting and it's great. You race through pressing 1,2,3 (or 4 and 5) and once you have categorised all the pics, it creates folders and moves the photos into the appropriate directory...

I have 1 = Great, 2 = Good, 3 = Cr#p. Once the folders are made and the files moved into them, I then process the 'Great' folder, backup the Great and Good folders, and see if there are any "Cr#p" folders older than a couple of months and kill them.

I want to like and use XMP, but I can't do it. I still use Capture 1 V3.7.x since I really don't like where they have gone with the interface and it's not XMP aware.

It would be great if there was a key that would take all the images in the current folder and move them (along with the .xmp file) into folders named "1" though "5" based on the XMP rating.

I haven't bought FPV yet but I really want to for the extra speed and great instant focus checking options - but lacking the move ability is a killer for me.

I tried with using the file rename {1} option etc, but then I have to run a file renamer over the files after I have sorted and manually moved them.

Any chance this lovely little feature could appear?

Regards
Neil Gardner
www.nzsnaps.com

[Talkiet]

Kind of a bump... Thanks for the really quick addition of my other suggestion (A keypress to show the RAW while filtering photos) and I am going to buy the app tonight based on that alone...

But I was wondering if you could let me know if this request is aligned with your plans? If not I might be able to come up with a new renaming plan, but it would be awesome if the option to copy (move) files to folders based on the xmp rating was available natively.

Cheers - Neil Gardner
www.nzsnaps.com

[Axel]

There is no such option at this time. As you found out, the closest is the prefixing function which renames the files by adding the rating at the beginning of the filename. This makes it easier to move files around according to rating using standard file management utilities or scripts.

Build-in batch move functionality will be added as part of a file management plugin in the future. There is some groundwork yet to be done so plug-ins can get the necessary level of access to the internal image list and internal attributes. When this is done all sorts of batch functionality will be easy to add.

[tko]

I've done quite a bit of research in the last few days, it appears there is no simply way to sort by XMP data. Once I get different rated files into different directories I can do different tasks, from deleting the bad to batch processing the good.

Sorting into directories by XMP is kind of crutch, if all other photo viewing photos were XMP aware, with XMP filters, it wouldn't be necessary.

I'm not sure why it has to be very complicated, could almost be a stand alone utility. Read the XMP file, find the corresponding jpg and raw file, send all including the XMP file to a sub directory with the rating level.

I'm basically using FPV for what it was intended for (thank you) - to rate a huge amount of photos quickly. Trouble is, and it's not FPV's fault, you need an XMP aware data base program to do much with the photos, and many of the programs that are good at this are also somewhat slow. Try telling Adobe Bridge or Imatch to import 15,000 photos and import the XMP data.

[Axel]

Patience, patience...

[Axel]

>Once I get different rated files into different directories I can do different tasks, from deleting the bad to batch processing the good

Check out the new rule-based batch file processing plug-in in v1.1: it can do just that and more, like copy to multiple locations, rename or delete based on rating, urgency, label, bookmark, or if the file was copied or not in the current session. For more information, see the announcement.

[Talkiet]

Brilliant - looks excellent - just having a play now... One question though - is it possible to have the destination path be a relative path instead of absolute?

I have my photos like this:

E:\2010\2010-03-15 - Disc Golf in Paradise\

And after rating the files I would like them to end up in

E:\2010\2010-03-15 - Disc Golf in Paradise\great
E:\2010\2010-03-15 - Disc Golf in Paradise\good
E:\2010\2010-03-15 - Disc Golf in Paradise\todelete

based on an XMP rating of 1,2,3

I could do that with the absolute path for E:\2010\2010-03-15 - Disc Golf in Paradise\, but what about the next event I shoot? Would I have to make new rules or modify the rules? Or manually copy from a dump location each time?

But I love the fact this is a general rules engine, it's a great implementation and should give the flexibility pretty much anyone wants.

Cheers - N

Cheers - N

[Axel]

At the moment the paths are absolute. You can set an option to re-create the relative source hierarchy, this is useful if you copy (or move) to a different drive, for example, and want to recreate the directory structure that was under the original image folder.

Support for relative paths (like ".\great" in your example) is a neat idea and will be added in a future build. As silly as it sounds, I did not think of that (but on the other hand, this "version 1" plug-in is already quite complex and sophisticated... a lot of effort went on the design and to make it work properly first, enhancements will follow).

Yes the rule engine approach should provide a lot of flexibility and, as it is extensible, I can relatively easily add more functionality now: I already have a few ideas for new "conditions" and "actions" for future versions (there are actually a couple that are in the plug-in already, but were not enabled in this first build as they were not ready for prime time yet).

Thanks for the feedback, keep it coming!

[Talkiet]

Thankyou sir, that's great news it will be added... I also did try using the {FilePath} attribute from the renaming menus, but that didn't work...

I'll probably have the files moved to an absolute path for the meantime and just copy them back to the final folder until the relative path (or support for {FilePath} or similar) option is added...

Regards
Neil Gardner

[Axel]

It was so obvious I actually implemented it right away and refreshed the installers. You can now say .\Good as destination folder and the program will create a subfolder within the current image folder. You can also say ..\Good and it will create a sibling folder, etc.

I plan to add a limited set of substitution variables in the future, for example {Rating}, so it will be possible to write a single rule like, for example, "Where the image has an XMP Rating greater than or equal to 3 then copy it to the .\{Rating}-Stars folder", and the program will create .\3-Stars, .\4-Stars and .\5-Stars as needed, but's that's for later.