Previously I posted about extracting EXIF information from images using the Python Image Library (PIL).  The reason I was investigating how to do this was I wanted to programmatically reorganise my personal photograph collection from its current ad-hoc mess to something more structured.

My goal was to use Python to extract the EXIF information from each image file and use the creation time of each image as key to organise each image into the directory structure Year/Month/Day.  If an image file is missing EXIF data then the file’s creation time can be used instead via an option.

An example of running this script to reoranise the photos folder and leave the original files in place would be:

python PhotoShuffle.py -copy /Daniel/Pictures /Daniel/OrganisedPictures

You can also find the latest version on github at github.com/dpbrown/PhotoShuffle, the following is the current script:

"""Scans a folder and builds a date sorted tree based on image creation time."""

if __name__ == '__main__':
    from os import makedirs, listdir, rmdir
    from os.path import join as joinpath, exists, getmtime
    from datetime import datetime
    from shutil import move, copy2 as copy
    from ExifScan import scan_exif_data
    from argparse import ArgumentParser

    PARSER = ArgumentParser(description='Builds a date sorted tree of images.')
    PARSER.add_argument( 'orig', metavar='O', help='Source root directory.')
    PARSER.add_argument( 'dest', metavar='D',
                         help='Destination root directory' )
    PARSER.add_argument( '-filetime', action='store_true',
                         help='Use file time if missing EXIF' )
    PARSER.add_argument( '-copy', action='store_true',
                         help='Copy files instead of moving.' )
    ARGS = PARSER.parse_args()

    print 'Gathering & processing EXIF data.'

    # Get creation time from EXIF data.
    DATA = scan_exif_data( ARGS.orig )

    # Process EXIF data.
    for r in DATA:
        info = r['exif']
        # precidence is DateTimeOriginal > DateTime.
        if 'DateTimeOriginal' in info.keys():
            r['ftime'] = info['DateTimeOriginal']
        elif 'DateTime' in info.keys():
            r['ftime'] = info['DateTime']
        if 'ftime' in r.keys():
            r['ftime'] = datetime.strptime(r['ftime'],'%Y:%m:%d %H:%M:%S')
        elif ARGS.filetime == True:
            ctime = getmtime( joinpath( r['path'], r['name'] + r['ext'] ))
            r['ftime'] = datetime.fromtimestamp( ctime )

    # Remove any files without datetime info.
    DATA = [ f for f in DATA if 'ftime' in f.keys() ]

    # Generate new path YYYY/MM/DD/ using EXIF date.
    for r in DATA:
        r['newpath'] = joinpath( ARGS.dest, r['ftime'].strftime('%Y/%m/%d') )

    # Generate filenames per directory: 1 to n+1 (zero padded) with DDMMMYY.
    print 'Generating filenames.'
    for newdir in set( [ i['newpath'] for i in DATA ] ):
        files = [ r for r in DATA if r['newpath'] == newdir ]
        pad = len( str( len(files) ) )
        usednames = []
        for i in range( len(files) ):
            datestr = files[i]['ftime'].strftime('%d%b%Y')
            newname = '%0*d_%s' % (pad, i+1, datestr)
            j = i+1
            # if filename exists keep looking until it doesn't. Ugly!
            while ( exists( joinpath( newdir, newname + files[i]['ext'] ) ) or
                newname in usednames ):
                j += 1
                jpad = max( pad, len( str( j ) ) )
                newname = '%0*d_%s' % (jpad, j, datestr)
            usednames.append( newname )
            files[i]['newname'] = newname

    # Copy the files to their new locations, creating directories as requried.
    print 'Copying files.'
    for r in DATA:
        origfile = joinpath( r['path'], r['name'] + r['ext'] )
        newfile = joinpath( r['newpath'], r['newname'] + r['ext'] )
        if not exists( r['newpath'] ):
            makedirs( r['newpath'] )
        if not exists( newfile ):
            if ARGS.copy:
                print 'Copying '+ origfile +' to '+ newfile
                copy( origfile, newfile )
            else:
                print 'Moving '+ origfile +' to '+ newfile
                move( origfile, newfile )
        else:
            print newfile +' already exists!'

    if ARGS.copy:
        print 'Removing empty directories'
        DIRS = set( [ d['path'] for d in DATA ] )
        for d in DIRS:
            # if the directory is empty then delete it.
            if len( listdir( d ) ) == 0:
                print 'Deleting dir ' + d
                rmdir( d )

UPDATE: I tend to run my duplicate file script over image collections before I organise them to remove any duplicates. You can find that script on github at github.com/dpbrown/Duplicate-Files.