Sorting photos that are deep within a folder structure.

Hi there,

I'm new to Hazel as have previously done all my file sorting via a Windows app called DropIt, but now looking to utilise a MacMini and this led me to Hazel. I'm loving it, but need some help trying to emulate what I've currently done to around 200,000+ photos.

Using DropIt, a huge majority of my photos have been sorted from numerous external drives to my NAS in the following format:

[Year Modified]
- [Month Modified]
- [Extension]
- [Date Modified] [Time Modified] [SHA-1 Hash].[Extension]

For example:
2006
> 10 Oct
> CR2
> 2006-10-12 13.29.13 2aae6c35c94fcfb415dbe95f408b9ce91ee846ed.cr2

And so on and so forth.

I've run into two issues so far, the first is not being able to append the file hash to the name, as this helps with duplicates (with continuous shooting you get a lot of files that have the same exact date and time, down to the second), so after an idea as to how to stop these files getting flagged as dupes.

The second issue is that some of these photos are deep within crappy folder structures on old drives. How can I get it to only perform the rules on Images/Movies and not folders? I have tried to set a rule up where it 'Runs rule on folder contents' but that also renames the subfolders using the naming convention above.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Can you post a screenshot of your rule? If you don't have your own cloud sharing service, you can use imgur.com.

As for the hash, you will need to use a script to calculate that. You can have AppleScripts return attributes back to Hazel which it can then use in patterns.

Hi Mr_Noodle, thanks for your prompt response. Here is a screenshot of the rule I was trying to implement. It works on loose files, but not on images within a folder. When I add the folder option, it sorts everything including the folders meaning it can be 8 or 9 levels deep!

https://share.cleanshot.com/LJg2zKzB

Only one of your screenshots came through. Have you checked the chapter on subfolders in the manual?