Camera Bits, Inc.

Here’s a little clean-up tip that could help people with a certain workflow. It helps me, so I thought I’d share it. This tip is only for macOS.

I ingest all my photos to a folder I’ve named “Incoming” and I use Photo Mechanic variables to put those photos into dated folders. Everything in Incoming can be considered “Needs to be culled.” In an ideal world, I would do my culling right away, but as we know, life doesn’t always cooperate.

So what I usually have is a number of folders of dates with photos in them that I need to cull. I will often right-click my Incoming folder in PM’s navigator to select “Open folder and subfolders in new Contact Sheet” so I can see everything I need to cull. I personally like Star ratings for this, and I do something unorthodox here: I assign my rejects 1 star. Most people I know use 0 star or something else for rejects, but using 1 star lets me know the difference between something I’ve seen and rejected (1 star), and something I haven’t even looked at (0 stars). This means I can leave and come back to the task at any time. If I am not sure where I have stopped, I can opt-click 0 stars in the rating widget and see ONLY the photos I have not yet looked at.

That’s not the tip though, this is: After I’m done culling, I will bring my keepers into Adobe Lightroom for post-processing. I currently let Lightroom move my photos out of the Incoming folder and into its own catalog. This works really well for me, with the exception that I am often left with a lot of empty folders in Incoming. I found a way to find empty folders in macOS’ Finder so I can get rid of them. You can open the “Search” panel in Finder with command-F. Set “Kind” to be Folder, then click the + to add more search criteria. By clicking “Other” in the search criteria, you can select “Number of items” and make it equal to 0 (or less than 1). The best part is that you can click “Save” to keep that search in Finders favorites pane. Once you find them, you can select and delete them.

This helps me keep my drive just that much cleaner. I hope it helps you. If you have a time-saving workflow tip, please share it on the Photo Mechanic Facebook page!

Happy photographing!

– Mick @ Camera Bits