What is the best way to import photos in Imatch ?

[dp7602]

Hi everybody !

First of all, I have to say that I know that Imatch does not import the photos the same way Lightroom does. It rather indexes them. So copying them in the right directory is enough. Imatch does the rest automatically.

The problem I have is when I do some clean up of my SD cards. I often don't remember if I had already copied the files or not on my main hard drive.

When I was using LR, I found very useful that the import module indicates in grey which photos were already imported in the database.

So, I wonder what could be the best way to add photos or files to a drive using Imatch.

Which tool do you use (if any) to avoid copying a file twice ?
Do you rely simply on copy / paste using Windows explorer ? Normally, Windows should warn you if there is at least one file that already exists in the destination directory. Il suppose also that this works if the file was not renamed.
Is there a way to avoid copying files that have been already copied but renamed afterwards ?

I'm not very keen on using a lot of different tools. So, if there is a solution to do it within Imatch, it would be nice.

Thanks for helping.
Regards.

Pierre

[Mario]

IMatch explicitly allows the same images to appear in different folders. Lr by default does not, because it considers these duplicates.
Different approach.

Do you have the problem that you don't remember if you have already copied files from your card to the PC often?
Do you keep the files on the card after having them copied to the PC?

Maybe a standard naming convention for your folders, like the popular

YEAR
|- MONTH
|- MONTH
...

2021
  |- 01
  |- 02

approach would prevent the extra work and uncertainty?
This should be immediately tell you if the files have already been copied and but still kept on the card.

You can instruct IMatch to assign duplicate files to a category automatically. see Indexing

If you let IMatch assign duplicates to a category and give this category a color-code, you can immediately see if images are duplicate after indexing new files.
This is basically what Lr does, but with more flexibility.

There are also search tools which allow you to find copies and duplicates in your database: Finding Duplicate Files

[dp7602]

Do you have the problem that you don't remember if you have already copied files from your card to the PC often?
Do you keep the files on the card after having them copied to the PC?

The second case is the right one. I know it is a better practice to format the card after copying the files AND be sure that they have been properly saved depending on the backup set.

Maybe a standard naming convention for your folders, like the popular

YEAR
|- MONTH
|- MONTH
...

2021
  |- 01
  |- 02

approach would prevent the extra work and uncertainty?
This should be immediately tell you if the files have already been copied and but still kept on the card.

Ok, but I don't take enough photos each month to do so. For now, I prefer to copy them in a Year directory, unless I create a specific directory, for holidays or travel location for example.

You can instruct IMatch to assign duplicate files to a category automatically. see Indexing

If you let IMatch assign duplicates to a category and give this category a color-code, you can immediately see if images are duplicate after indexing new files.
This is basically what Lr does, but with more flexibility.

Thanks, I'll have a look at this setting that I don't use at the moment. It will sure help. Thanks a lot.

There are also search tools which allow you to find copies and duplicates in your database: Finding Duplicate Files[/url]

[Mario]

I always wipe the cards after copying the files and making a backup.

I like my cards empty and ready to go when I'm shooting.
I also use many (smaller) cards. Cards can fail (and did so for me, on several occasions over the years) and then I don't loose too many images.
Even for cameras with two slots and auto copy 
I have seen cameras die out of the blue sky and bad things happened.

[jch2103]

As Mario suggested, a date-based folder structure helps keep track of which files have been copied to the folder. That allows me to copy sets of files to the computer when/if I don't want to transfer the entire contents of the memory card. And as he also notes, formatting the card is good practice (if you make sure you've gotten all the files copied from the card!).