Your First Import

This walks through bringing photos from existing folders into a clean, organized library. Your original folders are only read, never changed.

1. Choose the library folder

Open Settings and set Library folder to an empty folder (or an existing Picturesque library) on a disk with enough free space. In the desktop app, Browse… opens a folder picker; you can also type or paste a path.

2. Choose how folders are named

Folder structure offers ready-made layouts, such as By date or By date and place. Below it, the template can be edited freely; the examples underneath update as you type and show where three typical photos would go. A template with a mistake is explained in red. See Path Templates for every option.

Click Save.

3. Add a folder to import from

Open Activity and add a folder under Import folders: a memory card, an old photo dump, a backup drive. Subfolders are included. Importing starts right away, in the background.

Photos appear in the Library one by one as soon as each is copied, so you can start culling while the rest is still importing. The header shows how many photos are left; click it to come back to Activity.

4. Follow each photo

Photos in Activity lists every photo found, newest first, with a row of steps: Found, Read, Copied, Verified, Catalogued, Thumbnail and Analyzed. A green dot is done, a pulsing blue one is in progress, a red one is where a photo failed. The filters show only the photos in progress, imported, skipped as duplicates or failed. A photo that failed says why; Retry failed tries again once the cause is fixed.

The Log next to it records what happened and when, with warnings and errors highlighted; choose Errors to see only problems.

5. Keep importing

Folders are watched: new photos copied into them later are imported automatically, and the folder is checked again every few minutes and when the app starts. Untick Watch to import a folder only when you click Check. Quitting is safe at any time; importing continues where it stopped when the app starts again.

What next

• Import explains duplicates, safety, watching and resuming in detail.

• Photos and Files explains how RAW+JPEG pairs and sidecars are handled.