JAlbum / Explore / Organize

jAlbum can assist you in organizing your files into folders in various powerful ways. You can access jAlbum's Organize tools via the View menu or by right clicking thumbnails inside the Explore view, (thereby only affecting the selected images.)

These are the organization tools:

Wrap in folder

Create a new sub folder and move all selected objects to that folder and initiate a folder-rename

Flatten

Move all objects under the selected folder(s) to the current folder. This is somewhat the reverse of a "Wrap in folder" operation but it also affects objects several sub folders under.

Group alphabetically

Group objects alphabetically based on initial character of file name. This option is suitable for collectors that wish to present large number of objects in a alphabetical hierarchical way

Group by date

Group objects by year, month and day based on camera date. This allows for dozens of variations in up to 3 folder levels. You can even create customized folder groups by entering date patterns manually. See sample image.

Group by calendar

Images can be grouped in folders and tagged based on matching calendar events. Supported calendar formats follow the iCalendar format, typical file extensions are .ics, .ical, .icalendar or .ifb. If you want to test this feature before using your own calendars click on the 'Example' button to load a 'Seasons' calendar supplied by jAlbum.

Navigate to your exported calendar(or event) file, or drag and drop it onto the path field. You can also use a published calendar URL. Select the options you want:

Include single event

Include repeat events

Tag images with matching events.

jAlbum will then process the images and group any taken at a date and time that matches a calendar entry. Images matching an event will be grouped into a folder whose name will match the calendar's event name. If you selected tag images with matching events, then the name of the calendar entry will be added to the 'Keywords' field.

Group by place

Groups images by geographical location - north to south, use the dropdown menus to select the grouping required i.e. Country Region and Place or click on a preset option such as Place-Region, Countries, Places etc. Use the presets as a guide to entering the codes for custom organisation.

Images that do not have GPS metadata will be skipped. Organised images will be placed in folders and subfolders, for example using country code, region and place an image from Stockholm will be in SE>Stockholm>Stockholm.

Group by Keyword

Group objects by keyword.

This will place all selected files in subfolders named by keyword. If a file has more than one keyword it will be placed in subfolders in the order the keywords occur. Taking the Sample Portfolio as an example organising the People folder by keyword will result in the structure shown to the right. The group shot file, named 'jAlbum team.jpg', of Sanna, Jason, Pontus and David (with keywords in that order) will be in the folder People/Sanna/Jason/Pontus/David.

Group by creator

Uses the XMP creator metadata to put images by each photographer into their own folders.

Deletion of emptied sub folders

If jAlbum detects that no files are left in a sub folder after an organization operation, it can optionally delete such emptied sub folders

Removal of duplicates

If during an organization operaion, jAlbum detects that two identical files will end up in the same folder, only one copy will be kept. Files are considered identical if their names, size and camera dates match. If there is a file name clash only, then jAlbum will avoid removal of duplicates by appending file names with "-1", "-2" etc.