A little Python daemon to keep my photos organized on Dropbox.

It watches a source directory for modifications and moves new image files to a target directory depending on when the photo was taken, using EXIF data and creation date as a fallback.

Directory and file names follow a simple naming convention (YYYY-MM/YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss.ext) that keeps everything neatly organized. Duplicates are detected and ignored based on their SHA1 hash. Photos taken in the same instant get deduplicated by adding a suffix (-1, -2, etc) to their filenames.

The result looks somewhat like this:

├── 2013
│   ├── 2013-01
│   │   ├── 2013-01-05\ 13.24.45.jpg
│   │   ├── 2013-01-05\ 14.25.54.jpg
│   │   ├── 2013-01-05\ 21.28.48-1.jpg
│   │   ├── 2013-01-06\ 16.05.02.jpg
│   │   ├── 2013-01-06\ 19.59.25.jpg
│   │   ├── 2013-01-06\ 20.40.28.jpg
│   │   ├── 2013-01-06\ 21.14.38.jpg
│   │   ├── 2013-01-08\ 11.45.51.jpg
│   ├── 2013-02
│   |   ├─ ...
│   ├── ...
│   └── 2013-12
├── 2014
│   ├── 2014-01
│   ├── 2014-02
│   ├── ...
│   └── 2014-12
├── ...

I use ~/Dropbox/Camera Uploads as the source directory and ~/Dropbox/Photos as the target. This means I can use Dropbox's phone apps to automatically upload and organize new photos.

Inspired by

• http://simplicitybliss.com/exporting-your-iphoto-library-to-dropbox/
• https://github.com/wting/exifrenamer
• http://chambersdaily.com/learning-to-love-photo-management/

$ git clone [email protected]:dbader/photosorter.git
$ cd photosorter
$ pyvenv venv
$ . venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -r dev-requirements.txt
$ py.test

Watch src_dir and sort incoming photos into dest_dir.

$ ./sorter.py src_dir dest_dir

1. Move photosorter.conf.example to /etc/init as photosorter.conf and edit it to suit your needs by replacing the user, source and target directories.
2. Run $ sudo start photosorter.
3. Check the logs at /var/log/upstart/photosorter.log.

Daniel Bader – @dbader_org – [email protected]

Distributed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for more information.

https://github.com/dbader/photosorter