PHTOOLS by ANB

A bundle of small CLI tools for arranging, renaming, tagging of the photo and video files. Helps to keep photo-video assets in order.

PHTOOLS is an instrument intended for photographers\photo enthusiasts who:

• own tons of photo-video files and want to keep it in order
• really don't like the way how digital cameras name the files: P1193691.JPG, IMP_1409.JPG, _DSC1459.ARW etc.
• for photo storage prefer usage of traditional File System (folder structure) instead of "black box" databases of media managers (like iPhoto, Photoshop etc.)
• would like to have date-time-original info in the name of the file
• expects that sorting folder content "by name" will arrange photo-video assets in chronological order
• for some events (wedding, holydays etc.) have photos from different authors and would like to keep visible author name (nik) in the file name
• appreciate the use of internal metadata (EXIF, XMP etc.) beleiving it is the best way to keep context info of the picture
• are Ok with the use of Command Line tools

1. Get the latest ruby (>= 3.0) installed.
2. Install ExifTool by Phil Harvey (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/).
3. gem install phtools
4. Get list of phtools: phtools
5. Get usage info for particular command: phls -h

1. Fork or download from GitHub.

2. Install dependencies:

   bundle install

3. Develop.

4. Test:

   bundle exec rspec
   bundle exec cucumber

I have copies of SD Cards with photos, videos taken with DSLR camera on my Hard Disk in ~/Desktop/SDCard1 and in ~/Desktop/SDCard2.

And I have empty folder ~/Desktop/assets_staging (lets call it working folder).

And I want all the photo-video files from SD copies (including ones placed deep inside the folder structure of the SD card) to be moved to the working folder.

I run:

phls -R ~/Desktop/SDCard1 ~/Desktop/SDCard2 | phmove -a ~/Desktop/assets_staging

I get all photos moved to ~/Desktop/assets_staging.

And all videos are moved to ~/Desktop/assets_staging/VIDEO.

And all raw photo-files are moved to ~/Desktop/assets_staging/RAW.

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I have dozens of photo-files in my working folder ~/Desktop/assets_staging.

And my friend Alex it the author of the photos (nikname ALX).

I run:

cd ~/Desktop/assets_staging
phls | phbackup | phrename -a alx

I get all photos in ~/Desktop/assets_staging renamed according to PHTOOLS standard.

And I have all original photo-files are backed-up to ~/Desktop/assets_staging/backup.

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I have several photo files in my working folder ~/Desktop/assets_staging renamed to PHTOOLS standard.

And I want to get all the files renamed back to it's original names (given by DSLR camera)

I run:

cd ~/Desktop/assets_staging
phls | phrename --clean

I get all photos in ~/Desktop/assets_staging renamed to it's original names.

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I have several photo files in my working folder ~/Desktop/assets_staging renamed to PHTOOLS standard. Some photos were made by ANB, some photos were made by Alex (nick ALE)

And I want to change the author NICKNAME ALE to ALX.

I run:

cd ~/Desktop/assets_staging
phls '*ALE*'| phrename -a alx

I get all ALE photos in ~/Desktop/assets_staging renamed to ALX nickname.

And all ANB photos are kept unchanged.

Note. phrename is smart enough to let the user to re-run it several times on one file. Every time phrename -a re-runs it only overwrites author nickname (if it is different) keeping date-time-in-the-name unchanged.

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I have several video files taken by iPhone in my working folder ~/Desktop/assets_staging renamed to PHTOOLS standard.

And I've found out that iPhone gives the wrong value to CreateDate tag (in my case the error is minus 2 hours to real time of creation). Because of that 'phrename' gives the wrong YYYYmmdd-HHMMSS timestamp in the filename. I want to get the correct date-time info in the names of video files.

I run:

cd ~/Desktop/assets_staging
phls '*.mov'| phrename --shift_time 7200

I get all mov files in ~/Desktop/assets_staging renamed with correct YYYYmmdd-HHMMSS timestamp (+ 7200 second = + 2 hours than it was before).

PHTOOLS standard file name looks like this: YYYYmmdd-HHMMSS_AAA ORIGINAL.EXT, where

YYYYmmdd-HHMMSS - photo creation datestamp (year-month-day-hours-minutes-seconds). By default PHTOOLS use the value of EXIF tag groups DateTimeOriginal or CreateDate for this purpose (for more details see phrename help: phrename -h).

AAA - author nikname. 3 character long, only latin alphabet supported.

ORIGINAL.EXT - original file name, created by digital camera.

For example, the digital camera photo file P1193691.JPG, taken by AndrewBiz (aka ANB), after PHTOOLS processing will look like:
20160902-174939_ANB P1193691.JPG