Nice one.
Two questions come to mind (can’t test myself right now):
- How does darktable format sequences? How is digit padding handled?
- Is it possible to keep the original 4digit numbering from the cameras but dropping the characters before that?
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The sequence numbering is four digits, I haven’t found any option to change that.
Probably not, but can’t say for sure.
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These settings are quite similar to some examples already shared here.
Works efficient, only need to name the import job, the rest is automated into the appropriate folder structure.
Only downside would be if there are multiple jobs in a day. Then these need to be imported per job.
I suspect most software would suffer the same challenge with multiple jobs per day but you could select the first group of images, give a jobcode and then import. Repeat the process with the next group. It wouldn’t be too painful. Tagging images after import may be another option.
@hpbirkeland have started implementing your file naming wit sequence. I am wondering however, what happens when I exceed 9999 shots on a single holiday. Time will tell.
I don’t use dt’s copy and import (I use RPD, and I don’t use the dt database), but the building blocks for building directory and file names are very similar. You could assure yourself of name uniqueness if you included both the sequence number and the time stamp.
FWIW (not much), I use
for directories:
<Image date (YYYY-MM-DD)>_<Job code>_<Hyphenated short camera model (UPPERCASE)>
example: ~/Pictures/2024-01-12_r-c-harris-wild-water_X-T20
for files:
<Image date (YYYYMMDD)>-<Image date (HHMMSS)>-<Stored number (Four digits)>-<Name (Original Case)>
example: 20240112-161743-0002-_DSF1668.raf
I try to make my job codes keyword-rich, and they can get fairly verbose, so I don’t want to duplicate them in every file. But that’s just me.
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Please let us know if you find out 
. I’ve never been even remotely close to that.
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Indeed that is how it is done. Will be the same in any software of choice.
My flow is based on many years as a hobbyist. My first SLR was a Canon FTb purchased brand new, which I still have. I am also a recent transplant to darktable from rawtherapee. Before that I used other commercial software until they were bought out by Adobe and Corel.
I created a directory structure under my pictures folder “camera model”"YYYY-MM-DD location or event" (./Pictures/Canon R7/2024-04-29 SD Zoo). The date being the day I unload the files. These directories could be based on one day or a multi week vacation. I then copy the files from the SD card, bulk rename them based on the directory name, without the date but, I preserve the exposure number from the camera (SD Zoo-nnnn.cr3).
From darktable I will only use the “add to library” function and never take advantage of the database features.
This method has worked for me for years and I’ve seen no reason to change.
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I’m using digikam for importing but I guess the same naming scheme could be implemented in darktable as well:
Photos/YYYY/MM-DD_<brief description>/YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS_###.<ext>
This evolved a bit over the years. E.g. I stopped adding the year to the subfolder at some point as I found it to be redundant and more distracting than helpful.
Originally I only added the sequence number to the files if there were name collisions with only the timestamp (i.e. multiple shots in the same second) but also found it quite helpful to more easily identify a specific file in the folder, e.g. when I want to open it in some other application. So I’m always adding them now.
exiftool -r -P -progress -ext raf -ext cr2 -ext cr3 -ext nef -ext arw -ext dng -d /home/username/Pictures/Ingestion/%Y/%Y%m%d/%Y%m%d_%H%M%S%%+.2c.%%e "-filename<DateTimeOriginal" /run/media/username/the_memory_card/
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Thanks for this thread. Never used this functionality before. Did creation and copying of folders and files on my own. Now again I can save some clicks
I keep it simple with a mostly manual approach that dates back well before DT. I transfer my photos from the SD card to my hard drive into a folder labeled by event and date: “event_yyyy-mm-dd”, so a folder may look like “Beach 2024-05-28”.
Then I either upload within DT, or just drag and drop the new folder on the DT icon on my Windows desktop. This allows me to locate my photos easily within DT or through the file explorer.
I use the star rating system to track my progress. Nothing stays as unrated. Keepers have one star, in-progress are two, finished are three, and posted or printed are four. Five stars are for really special shots.
Each month or so, I’ll go back and cull out older shots that aren’t so good. I only need to have so many shots of Green Herons, and my more recent photos are (hopefully) better. I’m pretty aggressive with the culling, so my disk space stays reasonable.
DT allows me to organize and search files in any manner that I need. It’s not very elegant, but the process works well for me.
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I also don’t make use of this feature - I stay old fashioned and low level, but…
Working just with file system folders in the style of “/YYYY/YYYY-MM-DD Event…” has been enough for 25 years of digital photography and filmscans back another 20 years of hobbyist photography and will always be compatible with whatever tools and systems I will use in the future.
I lost trust in all database enabled image management and keep waiting for a future AI solution that will enable analysis and search features without months of manual work on adding tags and metadata (I’m too lazy for that). Until then - the only tags I need are in the folder names - enough to search for events and dates.
my workflow steps
- manual copy of images to manually created folder on SSD
- krename with mask: [1-4{[exifExif.Image.DateTime]}]-[6-7{[exifExif.Image.DateTime]}]-[9-10{[exifExif.Image.DateTime]}]-[5-8] keeps original image number from camera
- open folder in dt > work until finished > export JPGs > delete from dt
- keep JPGs and move RAW+XMP to parallel RAW Archive folder structure manually (archived to high capacity HDD)
- RSYNC to multiple backup disks frequently
boring, but solid as a rock 
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The beauty in it is that Darktable can do this for you. So in this specific case you’d just use the jobcode “beach” and the folders are made accordingly and the files copied to the right folder. Then you can still locate the photos both inside and outside DT.
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maybe I should indeed try it - let’s see if we can teach dancing to an old bear
Thanks, I’ll look into that. Can I specify sub folders that way, so my import example would be Beach/Beach 2024-05-28?
Yes, that’s no problem.
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I just tested that and it seems to work very well, plus it saves me a few extra steps. Thanks!
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