My photography workflow scripts. Includes my photo importer script and random other tools.
This is a Python script, and it should work on a reasonably recent version of Python 3.
Before you run the program, you can install dependencies by running
pip install -r requirements.txt.
You need dnglab for DNG conversion.
In Linux, there’s probably a prebuilt package somewhere and you just
need to know the full path to the software along the lines of
/usr/bin/dnglab or whatever.
In Windows, dnglab, as of writing, has no installer. Stick dnglab.exe
wherever you can find it, but you need to remember the path to the file
and set it in the configuration file as seen below.
The Photo Importinator moves (or converts) files from a source to a target.
A source can be either
A target is any folder that your computer/user has access to. Usually,
this is a NAS folder that is either mounted somewhere (in Windows, appears
as a drive letter) or is accessible through a locator (in Windows, accessible
through a server path à la \\NAS-SERVER\photos). Each target also has
a distinct way of organising files (e.g. “files in my NAS server should be
organised under YEAR\MONTH\DAY hierarchy”).
A camera is, well, a convenient label we give for a particular source of photos. It’s an internal label we use for settings for a particular scenario when we move images from that particular source.
For example, I have a Nikon D780, and for the purposes of
using this program, I have decided to arbitrarily call it Nikon_D780.
The camera uses SD cards, which, when I put them to the SD card reader,
usually appear as drive D: on my computer. Whevever I format the
card on the camera (as I do after every import), the gamera gives the card
the volume label NIKON D780. The camera puts one file in the DCIM
folder, called NC_FLLST.DAT, which shouldn’t be touched because none of
the software I have at hand knows a darn about it. Also, being a Nikon camera,
it uses .NEF raw files, which I prefer to be converted to the DNG format
automatically. Also, backups will be stored in vein of
Nikon_D780_20241122.7z, with the camera name and date stamp.
We can now express all of this information like this:
[Cameras.Nikon_D780]
card = 'D:'
card_label = 'NIKON D780'
ignore = [ 'NC_FLLST.DAT' ]
convert_raw = [ '.NEF' ]
And now whever I refer to my Nikon D780, I can just tell Photo Importinator
“I want photos from Nikon_D780, please”. Or:
> photo_importinator import Nikon_D780
Or:
> photo_importinator i Nikon_D780
No need to tell where the files come from (usually - Windows may sometimes use different drive letter, which can be overridden), no need to tell which files to ignore, no need to tell which files to convert. Nice! And since I have a default target set up, the one and only NAS I have, the importinator also knows where the files and backups go.
So how do we configure the rest?
The configuration file template is provides as photo_importinator_config.example.toml.
Copy the file to photo_importinator_config.toml in the appropriate configuration
directory, edit it appropriately as needed, and you’re good to go.
The configuration directory is located in Local AppData in Windows
(C:\Users\[you]\AppData\Local\photo_importinator\). In
Windows Explorer, you can find it by entering %AppData%
in Explorer bar or Win+R dialog
(you end up in your Roaming AppData), navigating up,
and going to Local subfolder.
In Linux and other POSIXy systems, it is located in your
XDG configuration directory
(usually ~/.config/photo_importinator/).
In both cases, you should create the photo_importinator folder
in case it doesn’t exist, and why would it, if you haven’t used the
app before - that’d be quite weird, right?
[Backup]
This section is currently empty and may be omitted. We no longer need a 7-Zip executable path as we use Python library for that.
[Target]
default = 'NAS-SERVER'
[Target.NAS-SERVER]
path = '//NAS-SERVER/photos'
backup_path = 'C:/Data/PhotoDump'
folder_structure = '{year:04d}/{month:02d}/{day:02d}'
The Target section defines the various targets where your files will end up in.
default specifies the default which you’ll want to use; can be left
undefined or as 'None' if you want no default to be set.
Folder structure: Use slashes / for path separation here, even in Windows.
The {stuff in curly braces} gets replaced by the number so named,
using uses Python formatting rules.
Long story short:
:04d in above template is “4-digit decimal, with leading zeros” and
:02d is “2-digit decimal, with leading zeros”.
This is flexible enough if you want the folders to have names like
2020 of the so-called Common Era/the month we counted as number 6/the day 10 of our monthly ordeal
(why would you, though), but if you want, say, actual month names,
then this gets hella trickier.
Some simple examples:
'{year:04d}/{month:02d}/{day:02d}''{year:04d}-{month:02d}/{day:02d}''{year:04d}-{month:02d}'…I hope you get the idea.
Note how the target subsections are named in the configuration file. If you want your
target to be named BLAH, then the configuration should be in the section called
[Target.BLAH]. Same goes with the cameras below.
[Conversion]
dnglab_path = 'dnglab.exe'
convert_flags = ['--dng-thumbnail', 'false']
This specifies the path to dnglab executable,
and the command-line flags given to the convert action.
[Cloud]
Dropbox = 'Dropbox/Camera Uploads'
OneDrive = 'OneDrive/Pictures/Camera Roll'
These declare the cloud sources. The paths are relative to home directory/folder.
[Cameras]
default = 'None'
[Cameras.Nikon_D780]
card = 'D:'
card_label = 'NIKON D780'
ignore = [ 'NC_FLLST.DAT' ]
convert_raw = [ '.NEF' ]
[Cameras.Nokia]
card = 'OneDrive'
As with targets, the default camera can be specified here, or left as 'None'.
For cameras, the only real required key is card. Just specify the drive letter
in Windows or mount point in POSIXland. Or, if it’s a cloud source, just specify
which!
The card_label feature is not actually used anywhere, but one day I might
(might!) implement card auto-detection. Or at least some
verification doohickey. Just use whatever name the camera uses for the card
for now.
ignore is a list of files that should be ignored. (In this example, some
Nikon mystery data file.)
convert_raw should list which file extensions trigger the automatic DNG
conversion using dnglab.
You can add something like this to your PowerShell profile
(located at C:\Users\[you]\Documents\WindowsPowerShell\Microsoft.PowerShell_profile.ps1):
function photo_importinator {
& python.exe "C:\whatever_folder_you_installed_this_on\photo_importinator\photo_importinator.py" $args
}