Windows software to organize photos and videos by date taken
March 8, 2014 10:27 PM   Subscribe

We have our windows 7 computer organized by user, and the folder system is a mess. I want to be able to browse photos, and videos, by one simple criteria, date taken. For example, want to see every picture and video on my PC That was taken on July 19, 2013. I don't want it to be tricked by the save date, the edit date, what folder it's in, or which camera was used. Only the date I snapped the shot. Fantastic would be some kind of timeline that you can very quickly scroll thru and it shows you some kind of date display where you're at.
posted by greptile to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)
 
Response by poster: I should mention that Picassa is failing for me, so don't suggest that. Also not interested in moving all photos to the cloud.
posted by greptile at 10:30 PM on March 8, 2014


Best answer: I think Windows Live Photo Gallery does this.
posted by cnc at 12:10 AM on March 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've got Windows 8, so not sure if the same thing applies:

In File Explorer, change the view to the Details view, then right click on the headings (where it says Name, Date, Type etc.), and select 'Date Taken'. You can then click on the column heading to sort using this.
posted by Gomez_in_the_South at 12:36 AM on March 9, 2014


Windows 7 folders by default have a "date taken" option. In your normal folder view, make sure it is set to "details" (not list, large icons, etc) so you can see file info. Then at the top where it has columns for name, date, file size, type, etc. right-click and check "date taken." Then when that column appears, press the date taken column and it will sort by when the photo was taken. You do not need any special software.
posted by AppleTurnover at 12:38 AM on March 9, 2014


When I first purchased a 3MP digital camera in 2002 I wanted this ability, and hated the default 'IMG0053' names that were often repeated, also quickly realized how difficult it is to change photo names manually.

I discovered and purchased Picmeta's Picture Information Extractor and have been using it ever since. It renames all the photos in a YYMMDD-HHMMSS format (that's customizable), and then I put them in a yearly folder with the month as subfolders.

Certainly works for us.
posted by scooterdog at 3:40 AM on March 9, 2014


Nikons' ViewNX is free and has pretty powerful renaming functionality, including the ability to batch add a date prefix to your files. RenameMaster can read EXIF data and be used similarly. I'll second cnc's recommendation of WLPG if you're in for the easiest possible solution.
posted by jmfitch at 6:12 AM on March 9, 2014


Look into the Windows 7 Libraries feature. It's designed for this kind of thing.

Collect all the folders in a library, then View > Arrange By > Day, and you'll see all the files from all the folders sorted by date. There's also options to "Arrange" by month, tag and a few other things. The default is to arrange by folder.
posted by philipy at 11:48 AM on March 9, 2014


Response by poster: Thanks for the suggestions everybody!

I can't believe I have never heard of Windows Live Photo Viewer, but that does just what I want, a massive vertical set of thumbnails, where at the bottom is 1995 (my personal digital dawn) and at the top is photos I took yesterday.

I also appreciated learning about the Libraries feature, which I never understood before.
posted by greptile at 9:08 PM on March 12, 2014


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