Sort Images with Hazel

Exiftool combined with Hazel gives you the ability to work with the internal dates contained in a photograph's metadata. After a bit of trial and error, I was able to take an Exiftool example and modify it to do what I needed.

The sample script from the Hazel forum uses ExifTool to rename photos.

# Be aware. This is the example and only renames files. Doesn't do what the Bash of Hazel scripts will do.
exiftool -P -d '%Y%m%d' \
   '-filename<${FileModifyDate;}.%e' \
        '-filename<${GPSDateTime;}.%e' \
        '-filename<${MediaCreateDate;}.%e' \
        '-filename<${ModifyDate;}.%e' \
        '-filename<${DateTimeOriginal;}.%e' \
        "$1"

This applies one of several metadata dates as the new name for each photo. The format is YearMonthDay.Extension

What I needed was to sort the photos into dated folders as below. 2020 01-Jan 02-Feb 03-Mar 04-Apr 05-May ... 2021 01-Jan 02-Feb

So, I took the example and after a bit of trial and error, I came up with a working solution. If you compare the example above and my finished script, you should be able to develop your own sorting script. Or you can use it as is.

There's also bash script that will do the same thing as the Hazel script, but requires a bit more setup.

Here's the setup screen from Hazel