content:en_us:6_photo_organizer

Photo Organizer

Digital photos are great…except when it comes time to upload and organize thousands of photos taken from your camera or smart-phone onto your server for accessibility and safe keeping (you have a backup strategy for your server, right!).

Photo Organizer app helps to automate the task of sorting and finding the digital photos you take and upload to your server by creating folders and moving files into a more orderly structure.

Installation

If your system does not have this app available, you can install it via the Marketplace.

You can find this feature in the menu system at the following location:

<navigation>Server|File|Photo Organizer</navigation>

Configuration

Settings

The settings section allows you to configure how the organizer works. Settings

Run Options

Allows you to specify whether to run the tool from your sources lists automatically (hourly or daily) or not at all.

Folder Destination

This is where the root folder is located for your media. If you have enabled folder formatting (eg. 2013-April), your folders will be located off this path.

If you have not enabled folder formatting, all photos will be located in this folder.

Folder Format

Organizes your photos by creating directories named using the creation date of the photos. As an example, YYYY-MMMMM setting would structure your photos off your destination folder as follows:

  • 2013-January/
  • 2013-February/
  • 2013-March/

Notifications

To receive notifications, put a valid email address in this field. Notifications will *only* be sent if something has changed since the last time the script has run.

This features utilizes the mail notification app. Make sure you have configured it correctly in order to receive alerts.

Sources

Sources can be any folder on your server. Any number of sources can be defined - when the organizer runs, your source list will be iterated.

To add a source, click on “Add”. Sources

Source

Click on the configure button to display a folder directory of your server. Select the source path to define a source. Config

Delete Original

Enable this option if you wish to move files from the original source to the destination. Leave unchecked if you wish to copy the file.

Recurse Folder

Recurse through the folder to sub-directories.

File Format

If you use multiple media capture devices, you may find it easier to find photos if the filename is renamed to include the make and/or model of the device which took the photo.

Enabling this option can make for some long filenames!

Advanced Configuration

Custom configuration of the Photo Organizer app can be made by editing the file located:

/etc/clearos/photo_organizer.conf

Command Line Utility

Advanced users can use the same script/utility from the Linux command line interface.

photo-organizer -h

Will display options/flags.

The following example will exclude your sources list, and run through the /tmp directory recursively, moving files to your destination folder (as configured via UI).

photo-organizer -p=/tmp -r=1 -m=1

Best Practices

Perhaps not a 'best practice' per se, however, one typical use case of this app is in parallel with the Dropbox app. Essentially, you are using your Dropbox account as a file transfer medium from your smartphone or laptop to your server.

Adding your Dropbox folder (or subfolder inside of Dropbox if you want to use a special folder for this use-case) as a source, allows you to move photos from your camera-enabled device (eg. smartphone) to your server's media location automatically. By running the sync action hourly or daily, you can move photos out of your Dropbox folder (there by freeing up space on your Dropbox account) and into your sorted photo media location automatically.

Additional Reading

content/en_us/6_photo_organizer.txt · Last modified: 2015/08/11 14:35 (external edit)