using Finder

There are a couple of utilities that will merge folders that might help. Search on MacUpdate

It will be an ongoing problem since this is our structure for saving photos and my husband and I use the same names and then merge them together so we each have a complete record of family photos.

The solution in the long term is to change this structure. There are many apps designed to specifically manage photos - iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom etc etc etc. Once of the many advantages to using these apps is that they make this sort of work easier, as they are designed to take these chores out of the work.

Regards

TD

Our structure is a folder for each year, then each month, then by download date with the folder name a brief description of what is inside.

Yes, I used to do something similar, but honestly you're doing way more work maintaining such a system than you should be doing. A program like Aperture can automatically sort photos by year and month for you and you can apply keywords and captions to photos rather than relying on something as limiting as a folder name. I still maintain my own folder structure rather than letting Aperture manage the library for me, but I don't bother to sort by more than general subject matter and, in particularly crowded folders, by year.

The good thing about the Finder and your date based system of Folders is that it's a perfectly good way to organise your files.

The bad thing about the Finder and your system is that it makes no allowance for the contents of the files, and the possibilities that these contents offer. In truth the Finder treats your photos exactly the same way as it treats Word Docs, Pdfs, BBEdit files or mp3.

But not all files are the same. Here's a stock answer I often post on the iPhoto forum, mildly edited, because what I describe here can be done by most any Photo app on most any OS.

I use keywords and Smart Albums exensively. I title the pics broadly.

I keyword on a
Who
What
Where basis (The When is in the photos's Exif metadata). I also rate the pics on a 1 - 5 star basis.

Using this system I can find pretty much find any pic in my 30k+ library in a couple of seconds.

So, for example, I have a batch of pics titled 'Seattle 08' and a typical keywording might include: John, Anne, Landscape, mountain, trees, snow. With a rating included it's so very easy to find the best pics we took at Mount Rainier.

File -> New Smart Album
set it to 'All"
title contains Seattle
keyword is mountain
keyword is snow
rating is 5 stars

Or, want a chronological album of John from birth to today?

New Smart Album
Keyword is John
Set the View options to Sort By Date Ascending

Want only the best pics?
add Rating is greater than 4 stars

The best thing about this system is that it's dynamic. If I add 50 more pics of John to the Library tomorrow, as I keyword and rate them they are added to the Smart Album.

BTW: Keywords are standard IPTC metadata and can be used on any OS with any Photo app.

Using your current system, could you find the best pics of one of your kids growing up, in chronological order, in 10 seconds?

Could you even show me them without endless rooting through one folder after another and destroying your filing system to get them into another folder?

Apps like iPhoto, Aperture, Picasa and Lightroom make managing photos easier. They make backing them up easier. They make viewing them easier, and sharing them easier.

As for your husband, would he insist on using a Hammer when a Spanner is designed for the job of opening the nut?

😉

Regards

TD

As I said above: there are various utilities that will merge folders. Search on MacUpdate

Regards

TD

These answers, though, don't really answer my question. I didn't ask how I should change what I'm doing to fit Apple.

Note that we're not trying to make you change to "fit Apple." Nothing about our answers is Apple-specific, except for the fact that we're discussing Apple products. You could achieve the same in the Mac version of Picasa, I believe, and the advice would be equally relevant on a PC. You're right that these don't answer the core question, but it's often the case in forums like this that the core question isn't really the question that needs to be answered, so you must not be offended when someone tries to help correct what they see as a flaw in your workflow.

I asked if Apple has, in my mind, a very basic and logical function to merge existing folders from 2 different drives with the same name.

As said, the answer to that is no. Of course, it's my opinion that if you're frequently relying on merges, you've got a very dangerous workflow going. Once upon a time, I used to try to keep certain folders on two laptops synced, using [Synk Pro|http://decimus.net/Synk>. Because I was modifying files on both machines daily, I caused a lot of my own headaches and lost a lot of data. This was through no fault of Synk's, but because such a workflow is inherently dangerous. It is far better to keep one working copy only. If you need to share it between machines, put that data in "the cloud," or on a flash drive, or on a portable external hard drive. Your solution of putting your photos on a drive connected to your wireless router and sharing it between two machines sounds absolutely perfect, and avoids the merge issue entirely.