PhotoSort

PhotoSort is a robust command-line tool written in Rust, designed to streamline the organization of your photo/video collections. It works by sourcing images/videos from a source directory, extracting the date from either the file name or its EXIF/metadata data, and then moving or copying the file to a target directory.

PhotoSort solves the problem of having pictures/videos from different cameras and devices that use different naming conventions to name created files. When viewing the photos/videos in a file browser this can be confusing, as the photos/videos are not sorted by date. PhotoSort solves this problem by renaming images/videos based on their EXIF/metadata data or file name, unifying the naming convention and making to go through the photos/videos by date.

The documentation can be found here: https://docs.rs/photo_sort

Features

Custom Target Format: You can define your own target date and file name formats for the renamed files.
Analysis Mode: Choose how you want to extract the date from your files. Only EXIF, only name, or a combination.
Move Mode: Choose how you want to move the files to the target directory. Options are moving, coping, hardlinking, symlinking, or relative symlinking.
Recursive Source Directory: PhotoSort can search the source directories recursively.
Dry Run Mode: Test the tool without making any changes to your files. The tool will print the actions it would take without actually executing them.
Sort photos and videos: PhotoSort can sort both photos and videos by their metadata.

Usage

To use PhotoSort, you need to pass in a set of arguments to define how you want to sort your photos. Here is an example:

photo_sort \
  --source-dir /path/to/photos \
  --target-dir /path/to/sorted_photos

This command will sort the photos in the /path/to/photos directory, rename them based on their EXIF data or name and then move them to the /path/to/sorted_photos directory.

You are not sure what the tool will do? Run it with the --dry-run flag to see what it would do without actually changing anything.

Another example:

photo_sort \
  --source_dir /path/to/photos \
  --recursive \
  --target-dir /path/to/sorted_photos \
  --analysis-mode "exif_then_name" \
  --date-format "%Y-%m-%d-_%H%M%S" \
  --file-format "{date?%Y}/{date}{_:dup}.{ext}" \
  --mkdir \
  --extensions "png,jpg" \
  --move-mode "hardlink"

This command will sort the photos in the /path/to/photos directory and its subdirectories, rename them based on their EXIF date (if not found then its name) and then hardlink them to the /path/to/sorted_photos directory. The files will be renamed to the format YYYY-MM-DD_HHMMSS[_##], only .png and .jpg files will be processed. The files will be placed in subdirectories based on the year part of the extracted date. Subdirectories will be automatically created.

For a full list of available options, run photo_sort --help:

$ photo_sort --help

A tool to rename and sort photos/videos by its EXIF date/metadata. It tries to extract the date
from the EXIF data or file name and renames the image file according to a given
format string.

Usage: photo_sort [OPTIONS] --source-dir <SOURCE_DIR>... --target-dir <TARGET_DIR>

Options:
  -s, --source-dir <SOURCE_DIR>...     The source directory to read the photos from
  
  -t, --target-dir <TARGET_DIR>        The target directory to write the sorted photos to
  
  -r, --recursive                      Whether to search the source directories recursively. If the flag is not set only
                                       immediate children of the source directories are considered
                                       
      --date-format <DATE_FORMAT>      Date format string to use as default date format. See [https://docs.rs/chrono/latest/chrono/format/strftime/index.html]
                                       for more information [default: %Y%m%d-%H%M%S]
                                       
  -f, --file-format <FILE_FORMAT>      The target file format. Everything outside a {...} block is copied as is. The
                                       target file format may contain "/" to indicate that the file should be placed in
                                       a subdirectory. Use the `--mkdir` flag to create the subdirectories. `{name}` is
                                       replaced with a filename without the date part. `{dup}` is replaced with a number
                                       if a file with the target name already exists. `{date}` is replaced with the date
                                       string, formatted according to the date_format parameter. `{date?format}` is
                                       replaced with the date string, formatted according to the "format" parameter.
                                       See [https://docs.rs/chrono/latest/chrono/format/strftime/index.html] for more
                                       information. `{type}` is replaced with MOV or IMG. `{type?img,vid}` is replaced
                                       with `img` if the file is an image, `vid` if the file is a video. Note that, when
                                       using other types than IMG or MOV, and rerunning the program again, the custom
                                       type will be seen as part of the file name. `{ext?upper/lower/copy}` is replaced
                                       with the original file extension. If `?upper` or `?lower` is specified, the
                                       extension will be made lower/upper case. leaving out `?...` or using `copy` copies
                                       the original file extension. Commands of the form {label:cmd} are
                                       replaced by {cmd}; if the replacement string is not empty then a prefix of "label"
                                       is added. This might be useful to add separators only if there is e.g. a {dup}
                                       part [default: {type}{_:date}{-:name}{-:dup}]
                                       
      --mkdir                          If the file format contains a "/", indicating that the file should be placed in a
                                       subdirectory, the mkdir flag controls if the tool is allowed to create non-existing subdirectories. No folder is
                                       created in dry-run mode
                                       
  -e, --extensions [<EXTENSIONS>...]   A comma separated list of file extensions to include in the analysis
                                       [default: jpg,jpeg,png,tiff,heif,heic,avif,webp]
                                       
  -a, --analysis-mode <ANALYSIS_MODE>  The sorting mode, possible values are name_then_exif, exif_then_name, only_name,
                                       only_exif. Name analysis tries to extract the date from the file name, Exif
                                       analysis tries to extract the date from the EXIF data [default: exif_then_name]
                                       
  -m, --move-mode <MOVE_MODE>          The action mode, possible values are move, copy, hardlink, relative_symlink,
                                       absolute_symlink. Move will move the files, Copy will copy the files, Hardlink
                                       (alias: hard) will create hardlinks, RelativeSymlink (alias: relsym) will create
                                       relative symlinks, AbsoluteSymlink (alias: abssym) will create absolute symlinks
                                       [default: move]
                                       
  -n, --dry-run                        Dry-run If set, the tool will not move any files but only print the actions it would take
  
  -v, --verbose                        Be verbose, if set, the tool will print more information about the actions it takes.
                                       Setting the RUST_LOG env var overrides this flag
                                       
  -d, --debug                          Debug, if set, the tool will print debug information (including debug implies
                                       setting verbose). Setting the RUST_LOG env var overrides this flag
                                       
  -h, --help                           Print help
  
  -V, --version                        Print version 
  
When building with video support enabled (see below):
      --video-extensions [<VIDEO_EXTENSIONS>...]  A comma separated list of video extensions to include in the analysis [default: mp4,mov,avi]

Installation

To install PhotoSort, you need to have Cargo installed on your system.

cargo install photo_sort

git clone https://github.com/0xCCF4/photo_sort.git
cd photo_sort
cargo install --path .

The photo_sort binary will then be available.

For using the video sorting feature follow the instructions on https://crates.io/crates/ffmpeg-next and respective their wiki https://github.com/zmwangx/rust-ffmpeg/wiki/Notes-on-building. After installing the dependencies, you can install the photo_sort binary with the video feature enabled:

cargo install --features video photo_sort

git clone https://github.com/0xCCF4/photo_sort.git
cd photo_sort
cargo install --features video --path .

Contributing

Contributions to PhotoSort are welcome! If you have a feature request, bug report, or want to contribute to the code, please open an issue or a pull request.

Something works differently than expected?

Try running the tool with the RUST_LOG environment variable set to trace to get more information about what the tool is doing and open an issue with the output.

RUST_LOG=trace photo_sort --source_dir /path/to/photos --target_dir /path/to/sorted_photos

License

PhotoSort is licensed under the GPLv3 license. See the LICENSE file for more details.