Lana,
This is in part what I purchased IM to do. I have 20,000 photos, in many formats, and these are all stored in Folders on my computer. I have attempted to organize them many times, but have failed until now. If those photos have metadata, such as date fields that are correct, ie, photo taken in 1955, with a date created field of 1955, then this is really very easy. If not, IM can help you find and correct all the incorrect data, apply keywords and it is the first program I have found able to do all this, but, it is not for the faint of heart. This is a lot of work, and correcting bad data is much harder than it seems.
SO, yes, this program works, but you have to want to put in hours to scrub up your data. Once done, the corrected data is writable to the file, jpeg lets say, and can now be shared with the keywords, and dates. I strongly advise experimenting with a small sample to learn it's capabilities and how to use hierarchical keywords to make sure your entries are consistent, which is the biggest error I have. It always helps to have examples to discuss specifics.
Dennis.
Hm, I am not sure, that I understand fully.
If I put files from another source (not from me) into the IMatch-system, I put it first in my normal workflow-folder (all new files comes there).
Then I give such pictures a new filename with the renamer in always the same "format":
20191015-1004-376716-s-coo-wiktora_a
First the date, then the time (1004 = 10.04h), then a unique number and then the letter, what I change in such cases.
Instead the normal -s- (from me) I put a
-f- there, means "fremd" (stranger).
Hence the filename would be here:
20191015-1004-376716-f-coo-wiktora_a
I can search of course for all -f- what means, all photos NOT taken from me.
In my workflow there could (or should) not be another "-f-" to avoid confusion.
In my case I store then such a file (automatically by renamer) into a folder-by-date - system.
Means, photos taken by be and by strangers are in the same (monthly) folder.
I think, this is more logical to me to have ALL pictures in the same date-route instead having pictures from others in another folder.
But of course I could change this any time.
Next step is to give some description to the file.
I have there in the metadata a filed for the author of the file, if I want, I can put there instead my name the name of the real photographer (if I know it).
And then I can start to put this file into categories, e.g. for family members and so on.
And/or I give keywords with names of people, who are on the pics.
Very important is for me, having always the same file-naming-system.
And a good folder-system.
This is the basic for IMatch (for me), after this comes all the power of IMatch (categories, collections....).
You could of course have only 10 big folders, what you could all nicely hold in categories and so on, but if files are growing, it will come the day, where you would wish, you had created a clever folder-system. (my opinion).
After this basics, comes the also important workflow-system, how use categories, for what you will use flags, stars, dots and so on ......
IMatch gives you a lot of possibilities, but the real power comes from you.
Like driving a car: you can have the best Tesla, Porsche, Bentley or whatever with a lot of power, but the real "art of driving" comes from you.
