Moving Photos around among Folders

[rau]

Can anyone advise how Photo Supreme handles the following scenario:

Assume a large photo collection (20,000) where the photos are stored in a folder structure (perhaps hundreds of folders in an arbitrary structure). The user moves many photos - perhaps a few hundred from various folders to other folders, and in the course of that, makes various ad-hoc changes to attributes including file names, metadata etc. Note that the user cannot be sure which folders were "touched" during this process. Upon completing this task, what must the user do (if anything) to ensure that Photo Supreme's database correctly reflects all these changes and how "quickly" does Photo Supreme achieve a match between the media and its database.

[Mke]

If you change and move them around from within PSU, then everything will be taken care of.

If you do it externally, then in PSU right-click and select one or more folders any point in the tree hierarchy and click on 'verify folder'. Personally I'd not do that on 20,000 images at once, since it will take a while if there are many changes - how long it takes depends on the spec of your PC - but might do it on 5,000 or so. Start small.

Either way, I'd backup and compact the database before and afterwards.

[jstartin]

.... makes various ad-hoc changes to attributes including file names, metadata etc ....

As Mke said, if you do everything from within PSU all should be well. If you only move files around then the steps Mke suggested should be sufficient. However, if you start changing filenames or metadata outside of PSU (using other tools) then you need to implement some very specific preparatory steps to avoid major problems which might include losing all labelling ('keywording') that you have performed.

[Mke]

Good point Jim - I write all my metadata to the images and check that there are no out-of-sync files after each session, so for me it's easy to move things from within PSU or using 3rd party tools.
But if you write metadata to sidecar files, make sure you move the sidecars as well as the images when working outside PSU.
And if you don't don't write metadata at all, working outside PSU is going to get tricky...

[rau]

Thanks for replies.

My experience is with Windows Photo Gallery, which I want to replace given it's now unavailable from Microsoft and may one day cease to function. All file moves or changes to file names, or metadata made within WPG were automatically looked after. I never tried changing metadata externally, but I'm pretty sure it automatically picked up file moves or name changes made externally, eg via Windows Explorer. It contributed to the product being so easy to use.