Organise photos into dated folders
Portman2 files every imported photo into folders by year, month and day and names it from when it was taken — or into folders and names of your own choosing.
Every library has a filing shape: the folders an imported photo goes into, and the name it is given. It is chosen when the library is created and is the same on every computer that opens the library.
The usual shape
Unless the library says otherwise, a photo taken on 23 September 2026 is filed in 2026\2026-09\2026-09-23, and named from the time it was taken, a short fingerprint of its contents and the tags it was imported with.
Choosing a shape
When you create a library, How photographs are filed lets you set the Folders and File names templates, with a sample of what they produce. If the photo folder you pick is already filed some other way, Portman2 notices and offers to file imports the same way.
For an existing library
Settings ▸ Library ▸ Folder shows how this library files imports under How photographs are filed. A library that never recorded a shape, and whose folders turn out to be filed some other way, is offered Use this shape. Recording a shape only decides where the next imports go: nothing already in the library moves.
Filing by tag
The Folders template can sort photos by subject as well as by date. {tag}\{year} files a photo imported with the tags holiday and beach in holiday\2026, and {year}\{tag} in 2026\holiday.
{tag}is the tag the photo was given first. On import that is the first tag of the source it came from, so adding another tag later never changes it.- A photo with no tags goes in a folder called
Untagged, so it is easy to find and tag later. - A folder template needs at least one
{…}in it, but it no longer has to be a date.{hash6},{stem}and{time}are allowed in a folder too, with a warning beside the sample: they give almost every photo a folder of its own.
Filing photos that are already in the library
A photo is filed once, when it is imported. To move photos that are already in the library into the folders and names the library would give them now — after tagging them, say, in a library filed by {tag} — select them, right-click and choose Move & rename ▸ Re-file by library rules. See Rename photos, batch rename, and move them out of the library.
Duplicates
The fingerprint is how an import recognises a file that is already in the library, whatever it is called.