import-photos.sh

A small, dependency-light bash script that copies RAW photo files from an SD card or tethered camera into a date-sorted photo library — the same <year>/<YYYY-MM-DD>/ structure that Lightroom Classic (and most other catalog tools) work with cleanly.

Built for a NAS-backed Lightroom workflow, but it works against any local folder, external drive, or mounted network share.

Why

Most camera import tools either:

• lock you into their own app (Lightroom's built-in importer is slow and duplicates previews), or
• dump everything into one flat folder with camera-generated filenames.

This script does one thing: reads the actual capture date from each file's EXIF data and copies it into a clean, predictable folder structure — so your existing Lightroom catalog (or any other tool) can just point at the new date folders and add them.

Features

• Reads true capture date from EXIF (DateTimeOriginal), not file modification time — so it's correct even for cards that have been reformatted, backed up, or copied around
• Copy-only — never touches or deletes the originals on the card
• Safe to re-run: files that already exist at the destination are skipped
• Configurable file extensions (works with any RAW format your camera produces, not just Fuji/Leica)
• No dependencies beyond exiftool, which most photographers already have

Requirements

• macOS or Linux
• exiftool
  • macOS: brew install exiftool
  • Linux: sudo apt install libimage-exiftool-perl

Usage

chmod +x import-photos.sh

# Import from an SD card mounted at /Volumes/NO_NAME into ./Photography
./import-photos.sh /Volumes/NO_NAME

# Import into a specific library location
DEST_BASE="/Volumes/Photos/Photography" ./import-photos.sh /Volumes/NO_NAME

# Only import specific RAW formats
EXTENSIONS="RAF DNG" ./import-photos.sh /Volumes/NO_NAME

Options (environment variables)

Variable	Default	Description
DEST_BASE	./Photography	Root folder of your photo library
EXTENSIONS	RAF DNG CR2 CR3 NEF ARW ORF	Space-separated list of RAW extensions to import

Example output

Scanning /Volumes/NO_NAME for: RAF DNG CR2 CR3 NEF ARW ORF ...
Found 214 file(s). Sorting by capture date into /Volumes/Photos/Photography ...

  Copied: DSCF1234.RAF  ->  2026/2026-07-20/
  Copied: DSCF1235.RAF  ->  2026/2026-07-20/
  Skipped (already exists): L1000456.DNG  [2026/2026-07-19]
  ...

-------------------------------------
Import complete.
  Copied:  198
  Skipped: 14 (already existed at destination)
  Failed:  2 (no EXIF date or copy error)
-------------------------------------

Originals on /Volumes/NO_NAME were left untouched.
Next step: in Lightroom, use File > Add Photos to Catalog and point at the new date folder(s) above.

Notes

• Files with no readable EXIF capture date (rare, but happens with some corrupted files or non-standard formats) are flagged as failed and left for manual review — nothing is silently dropped.
• The script does not touch Lightroom itself; after copying, use File > Add Photos to Catalog (not Import) so Lightroom doesn't try to re-copy files that are already in place.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.