artistip

Do you sometimes get lists of selected photos from your clients, which they want you to print? How do you actually pick those photos out of the folder in which they were stored? Do you take the long, manual-select path, Holding your CTRL key and clicking on each listed photo? Do you sometimes lose attention for a second and release that damn CTRL key and need to go all over again? Man, this little thing can actually burn a photographer hours of work doing practically nothing. If it's only a small amount of photos - no problem, the manual selecting works fine. But what if you get a 400 photos list? Well there's an automated way of selecting and copying the files, it's easy to perform once you learn the workflow, and it's not based on a software, but only a simple batch file. The syntax I base this tutorial on is only applicable on Windows based computers, however  If you're running Mac or Linux you may still want to read the post and figure out how to adapt the suggested workflow to your OS.

Getting ready, or: Ingredients

First, create a new folder in the root of drive C: and name it source. Copy all of the files of the photoshoot you're about to be selecting from to this folder.

Now, create another folder in the root of drive C: and name it Destination. After you complete the process successfully, The selected files will be copied/moved to this folder.

Lastly, download the batch from my server or create it yourself. Copy the batches to the root of your C: drive. I provide a zip-file with two batches: listmove.bat, and listcopy.bat. The only difference is that listmove, deletes the files it copied from the source folder, while listcopy leaves the source folder intact. Note: If you decide to download the batch files from my server please be sure to check their contents before running them. Batch files can do anything, from starting applications to formatting your drive, so in case a hacker breaks into my server I wouldn't want you to suffer the consequences. To validate the contents of the batch files right click each file, select edit and make sure the content is only the following syntax:

 

 

Step 1: Get an Excel list from your client.

The first thing to do is... be assertive. In the past, I used to accept all sorts of photo lists from my clients. They faxed them to me hand written, they emailed me word docs, I once even got a messy list of numbers scribbled on a napkin! Not any more. I ask my clients to provide an ordered Excel spreadsheet with the photo numbers. If they ask why I explain that it will save me time and effort working on their list end help me provide them their photos faster, which is true; when I get those hand written lists all I wanna do is push them deep in my drawer and forget about it until the client calls to remind me... If the client doesn't use Microsoft Excel I guess you can do well with Google Docs or such...

OK then? An excel list. Let's move on to...

Step 2: Convert the photo-numbers to filenames text list.

What we get from the client is most probably something like this:

Now, the actual files are named io0001.jpg and so on, so we do the following:

 

Tip: How do you name the photos? I always rename my photos according to the people/project name. In this example the bride's name is Isabella and the groom is named Owen so I added io as a prefix to all of the photos.

 

1. Add a column to the left of the numbers and fill it with io. A short way of doing that would be to type io in the first sell, move your mouse to the bottom right corner of the cell until a cross appears, and then hold the CTRL button and click and drag the cross down to the last cell in your list. Now all the cells in the new A column will be filled with io.



2. Fill column C with jpg using the same CTRL-click and drag mehod.



3. save the excel list as a text file.



4. Double click the text list you've saved  to open it in notepad. It will look like this
   

   We want to get rid of the spaces to get a real filename.jpg format so do the following:



5. Click Edit > Replace and then copy the io together with the space that comes after it, and paste to the "find what" box. In the "Replace with" box just type io
   

   

Now hit the Replace all button and this it what you should get:

1. The same goes to the jpg. This time copy the space before the jpg together with the letters jpg and paste to the "find what" box. In the "Replace with" box type .jpg. Note the dot before the jpg.
   

   

Now hit the Replace all button and this it what you should get:

1. Now that the list matches the filenames we got, save the text list as text.txt in the root of drive c:\ (File > Save As > browse to C drive > Type text > Hit Save)

Step 3: Run listmove.bat or listcopy.bat

But before that; a brief checklist:

• Are all the source files present in your c:\source folder?
• Do you have a c:\list.txt that matches the exact filename structure of your source files?

Tip! I highly recommend you don't run the batch files from windows explorer double clicking on the icon. Instead, run them from the Command Prompt good old DOS window. This way you will be able to scroll through the whole process and track errors (i.e. files that do not exist... maybe the client had miss typed a number). To use command prompt click Start > Run > type: CMD > click OK. At the command prompt type cd\ and press enter to get to the root level. then just type listmove, or listcopy to activate the batch file you want to run.

Step 4: Done! Check your Destination folder

In the folder you should have the exact number of photos as in the original excel list the client sent you.