Unlike other photo/video organizers, Silent Sifter does not try to grab and hoard all of your files. You will not see a window that displays all of your files for you to drag them around. Silent Sifter lets you decide how to manage these files, even if that means in multiple structures, multiple applications, etc.
What does Silent Sifter Do?
- Imports photos and videos from cameras, iPhones, iPads, and smartphones
- Finds your photos and videos on your computer
- Compares the files found with your existing photo/video collection(s)
- Removes any duplicate photos or videos
- Organizes the new files into folders based on the date they were created
- Renames the files by adding the date taken
- Does it all in one-click
What is the problem Silent Sifter solves?
You have lots of photos and videos. They come from many different places:
Some you create: you take photos and videos with your smartphone, you take photos with your SLR, you take videos with an old Flip camera maybe. Maybe you have a point and shoot camera, that you take photos and videos with.
Some you get from other people: Maybe someone gives you copies of files from a wedding you both attended, or a vacation you both went on. Your spouse may have a smartphone and take their own photos and videos, and you want to keep them all together. Your kids may have their own camera or smartphone and share photos with you. Maybe your kids are grown, and have their own kids, and they send you photos occasionally.
Keeping all of this organized is difficult. Silent Sifter is designed to help – to make it fast and easy to get your photos and videos organized, and keeping them organized.
Great, so how does Silent Sifter solve this problem?
There are a lot of details behind the scenes, but here are the basics.
Setup:
When you download Silent Sifter from the App Store, you will need to configure it the first time. That means telling Silent Sifter where your photos and videos are coming from, and where you want them to be copied to. We call them Input Locations and Output locations.
Input Locations:
Tell Silent Sifter where your photos and videos are. SD Card? Great, plug it in, and add an Input Folder Location pointing to the SD Card. Smartphone? Great, plug it in to your computer so OSX can see it, and then add an Input Camera Location by pressing the camera button. Do this as many times as you like, Silent Sifter has no limit on the number of Input Locations you can choose (it only displays the first 5 that are currently connected to the system).
Output Locations:
Tell Silent Sifter where you want your photos organized. This is where Silent Sifter will store all of your photos and videos from here on out. Maybe you want them on an external USB Hard Drive. Great, add an Output Folder Location, and choose the folder where you want your photos organized. Maybe you want to store your photos on Dropbox or some other cloud service. Great, just add an Output Folder Location, and choose the folder where you want the files to be in your cloud service. You can choose as many Output Locations as you want (again, it displays only the first 5 that are connected).
That’s it. You’re ready to sift.
Sifting
When you have new files, you open the Silent Sifter app, press on the Sifter, and wait for it to complete. It’s that easy.
What does it do during Sifting?
Silent Sifter analyzes the files it finds in your Input Locations, finds all of the Photos and Videos, compares them to the files in your Output Locations, and determines which need to be copied to your Output Locations. Then it copies them. It skips any files it deems as duplicates, and it handles any files where it finds a collision.
It logs every operation, so you can see what happened, and it tells you how many files it copied from and to each location. Last of all, it leaves all files in their original locations alone. It is up to you to decide what to do with those files. Maybe you don’t want to clear out that SD card or your Smartphone yet, thats fine. Next time you run the Silent Sifter, any duplicates will be skipped, and just the new files will be copied.
Those are the basics – have any questions? Let us know, by leaving a comment on this post or in our Forums.