Sorting Files into Subfolders based on EXIF Date

Question

I have a huge directory from a HDD recovery that contains 70000+ JPEG files. I tried playing around with some AppleScripts, that I found, but had no luck. I already installed EXIFtool, which might be useful for this task.

The current directory structure is as follows:

dir001
- file0001.jpg
  ...
- file9999.jpg
dir002
- file0001.jpg
  ...
- file9999.jpg
...
dir070
- file0001.jpg
- ...
- file9999.jpg

The files mostly have EXIF Data, but sometimes there are Files without metadata. Now I hope to be able to sort and rename these files into folders based on the date:

1999
- 1999 01 31
  - 1999_01_31_-_22_59_59.jpg
2000
- 2000 05 20
  - 2000_05_20_-_21_59_59.jpg
  - 2000_05_20_-_22_59_59.jpg

I figured Applescript/Automator might come in handy for this, however every other solution would be welcome, too!

Answer 1

Try running a command like this:

exiftool -o . '-Filename<DateTimeOriginal' -d /path/to/target/%Y/%Y\ %m\ %d/%Y_%m_%d_-_%H_%M_%S.jpg -r /path/to/pictures

-o . copies the files instead of moving them. -Filename<DateTimeOriginal changes the filename based on the EXIF date. -d specifies a date format.