Trying to get a handle on my photos/videos

[noobinator]

I have a MacBook Air, an iPhone 6 Plus, and a Time Capsule. My MacBook backs up to the time capsule automatically.

On my previous iMac i had saved a backup on the time capsule that had probably 5,000 photos and videos. I'd sync them from my camera/phone to the computer through lightroom.

Now on my MacBook Air, i started fresh and no longer have access to Lightroom because I lost the code. So now I use iPhoto to get my photos from my phone / camera to the computer.

So now I have most of my photos/videos on a time capsule backup to a computer i no longer own, that I accessed through lightroom, which I no longer have access to. I also have my macbook air that has the photos/videos stored through iPhoto.

I just want to get all my photos/videos in one place. Ideally a folder on my timecapsule called media with subfolders called videos and photos. I have no clue how to access the lightroom photos from my old imac time capsule backup and I do not know how to gain access to the files on my new macbook air save through iphoto.

Does this make sense? I just want the files somewhere, I don't want to have them only accessible through other programs and locked in a backup.

Where do I even begin?

 

[r0k]

I have a MacBook Air, an iPhone 6 Plus, and a Time Capsule. My MacBook backs up to the time capsule automatically.

On my previous iMac i had saved a backup on the time capsule that had probably 5,000 photos and videos. I'd sync them from my camera/phone to the computer through lightroom.

Now on my MacBook Air, i started fresh and no longer have access to Lightroom because I lost the code. So now I use iPhoto to get my photos from my phone / camera to the computer.

So now I have most of my photos/videos on a time capsule backup to a computer i no longer own, that I accessed through lightroom, which I no longer have access to. I also have my macbook air that has the photos/videos stored through iPhoto.

I just want to get all my photos/videos in one place. Ideally a folder on my timecapsule called media with subfolders called videos and photos. I have no clue how to access the lightroom photos from my old imac time capsule backup and I do not know how to gain access to the files on my new macbook air save through iphoto.

Does this make sense? I just want the files somewhere, I don't want to have them only accessible through other programs and locked in a backup.

Where do I even begin?

You should be able to browse old Time Machine backups in Finder. You simply mount the "sparsebundle" file as if it was disk image (dmg) file. You can then search within the file for jpg images and pretty quickly find out where your original photos are stored.

Once you've found them, I suggest you take it on yourself to organize them. This way you are never held hostage by a particular piece of software or any platform or ecosystem. One method is for you to create folders for years and subfolders for months. This is what I do. Then when I import photos to iPhoto, I simply turn off "copy file to iPhoto Library". This means that I can do everything I want to them in iPhoto but I can't go around moving files or iPhoto loses track of where I put them.

Another alternative is to take advantage of one of the cloud options for photo backup. iPhoto is one of the more expensive options, even with the new pricing. For instance, it's $4 a month for 200 GB and $20 a month for 1 TB. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime costs $99 a year and includes unlimited photo backup. There are also other services around for photo backup at various prices such as google+, flickr (both free) and others like smugmug (paid) or shutterfly (which tries to sell you prints).

 

[noobinator]

You should be able to browse old Time Machine backups in Finder. You simply mount the "sparsebundle" file as if it was disk image (dmg) file. You can then search within the file for jpg images and pretty quickly find out where your original photos are stored.

Once you've found them, I suggest you take it on yourself to organize them. This way you are never held hostage by a particular piece of software or any platform or ecosystem. One method is for you to create folders for years and subfolders for months. This is what I do. Then when I import photos to iPhoto, I simply turn off "copy file to iPhoto Library". This means that I can do everything I want to them in iPhoto but I can't go around moving files or iPhoto loses track of where I put them.

Another alternative is to take advantage of one of the cloud options for photo backup. iPhoto is one of the more expensive options, even with the new pricing. For instance, it's $4 a month for 200 GB and $20 a month for 1 TB. Meanwhile, Amazon Prime costs $99 a year and includes unlimited photo backup. There are also other services around for photo backup at various prices such as google+, flickr (both free) and others like smugmug (paid) or shutterfly (which tries to sell you prints).

Thanks, last night I managed to get them all into a folder called media and subfolders of Pictures and Videos. I know just have a mess or weirdly named files. Over 8,500 it turned out to be.

They were buried deep in folders with weird names like sub, 100b, 32332A, etc. so I pretty much dragged the main lightroom folder with the files and the main iphoto file with the photos to the media folder.

Then I searched the folder for .jpg, .mov, etc and copied the results to the main folder. I did this to get rid of the sometimes 4 or 5 layers of folders.

Now though I have no organization to my 8,500 files. They are randomly named and not in order by date or anything. Is there anyway for me to figure out the dates on these and sort them without clicking info on each individual file? I really need to clean this up.

 

[r0k]

Thanks, last night I managed to get them all into a folder called media and subfolders of Pictures and Videos. I know just have a mess or weirdly named files. Over 8,500 it turned out to be.

They were buried deep in folders with weird names like sub, 100b, 32332A, etc. so I pretty much dragged the main lightroom folder with the files and the main iphoto file with the photos to the media folder.

Then I searched the folder for .jpg, .mov, etc and copied the results to the main folder. I did this to get rid of the sometimes 4 or 5 layers of folders.

Now though I have no organization to my 8,500 files. They are randomly named and not in order by date or anything. Is there anyway for me to figure out the dates on these and sort them without clicking info on each individual file? I really need to clean this up.

Assuming you still have file dates preserved, you can drag them into iPhoto, remembering to turn OFF copy files to iPhoto Library. Then iPhoto will arrange them by date, etc. Of course you'll need to change finder to the details view so you can click on the date column to sort by date.

Another thing you can do is create folders for years, then sort files by date and drag all the 2011 files to the 2011 folder, etc. You might decide to do this before you import them to iPhoto so that the resulting "events" are named for the years. If you don't mind just one more level deep, you could create folders for months inside your year folders and once again sort by date and drag all the July files to the July folder, etc. Organizing by date is one of the simplest things you can do in just about any operating system because every modern OS is capable of organizing files by date.

 

[noobinator]

Assuming you still have file dates preserved, you can drag them into iPhoto, remembering to turn OFF copy files to iPhoto Library. Then iPhoto will arrange them by date, etc. Of course you'll need to change finder to the details view so you can click on the date column to sort by date.

Another thing you can do is create folders for years, then sort files by date and drag all the 2011 files to the 2011 folder, etc. You might decide to do this before you import them to iPhoto so that the resulting "events" are named for the years. If you don't mind just one more level deep, you could create folders for months inside your year folders and once again sort by date and drag all the July files to the July folder, etc. Organizing by date is one of the simplest things you can do in just about any operating system because every modern OS is capable of organizing files by date.

Thanks r0k, I'll give this a try and report back. Ultimately I want to tie it back into an editing program but I want to clean it up first.

If I go through this and manually divide the folders up into years, months etc. and then buy Lightroom can I just point lightroom at my folder and it will import them all? Will it mess with my folders and filing system?

 

[r0k]

Thanks r0k, I'll give this a try and report back. Ultimately I want to tie it back into an editing program but I want to clean it up first.

If I go through this and manually divide the folders up into years, months etc. and then buy Lightroom can I just point lightroom at my folder and it will import them all? Will it mess with my folders and filing system?

Sorry I'm not a lightroom user. Since Lightroom competes with iPhoto I would assume it would offer you the option to either import copies of them or not import copies. If it imports copies of them then you will wind up with them taking up double the disk space. You have your original files that you organized by year then month or whatever, then you have files that lightroom has imported into its folder structure "somewhere else" on your Mac. The copies might possibly wind up in your home folder's Pictures folder or perhaps in some Library or Application Support folder.