# Mac Software: Need to Untangle my photographic youth and OCD



## dstppy (Jan 20, 2012)

I've (somewhat) got image backups down now (despite my wife's effort to the contrary) and do the following:
Import jpegs for general use to iPhoto
Import CR2 into aperture (I now have a copy of lightroom as well)
Back up files to 2 external HDD under folder names cameraName_jpg cameraName_CR2 etc.

What I've got is a mishmash of hoarding from years past where I kept images sorted by topic (my crazy windows days) and somehow I managed to inter-mingle renamed files that had exif stripped from online backups and there was one version of iPhoto that did that on import.

I'm left with 90,000 files . . . and though I've resolved myself to fix this, I can't just rely on a dumb-delete system like DupeZap. Can you suggest a software that will allow me, after importing, to group 'similar files' into generations (like Aperture and Lightroom) automatically by EXIF, and possibly visually match ones that have no EXIF?

ACDSee For Windows was pretty close back in the day, where you could batch process files by exif, but it would hang/crash a lot.

There's probably 18k-25k of individual photos, but I just need a way to get them somewhat back in order. I was planning on trying picasa, aperture, and lightroom to see what they could do, but being that I tend to pour hours into this type to thing, I figured some of you folks could give me a suggestion as to what to start with.

Therapy is the obvious answer; saving that, what's the alternative?  Thanks folks.


----------



## Mt Spokane Photography (Jan 20, 2012)

Lightroom does this very well as long as you have exif. Those with exif stripped can be sorted by name.

Lightroom can make folders by year, month, etc and place the images in the correct ones. I would think aperture will do this also. It should not matter if they are CR2 or jpeg, just create a catalog for the jpegs and a different one for the CR2 files so you can manage them separately, if thats what you want to do.


----------



## dstppy (Jan 21, 2012)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Lightroom does this very well as long as you have exif. Those with exif stripped can be sorted by name.
> 
> Lightroom can make folders by year, month, etc and place the images in the correct ones. I would think aperture will do this also. It should not matter if they are CR2 or jpeg, just create a catalog for the jpegs and a different one for the CR2 files so you can manage them separately, if thats what you want to do.



Thanks, since I already have a copy, I'll start there.


----------

