Organize your photos

1. Point SnapAtlas™ at your photos

Click the folder icon in the toolbar and choose the top-level folder that holds your photo library, then click Deep Scan. It reads every photo's full details — date, camera, GPS — which is what the organize step builds on. A big library can take several minutes or, depending on your drive type, several hours. SnapAtlas™ carefully keeps your information up to date, so future scans only need to find new changes — and you can keep browsing while it runs.

2. Protect the folders you don't want touched

Before organizing, right-click any folder and choose Leave this folder alone — SnapAtlas™ will never move or rename it or anything inside it. Protect folders like these:

• "Grandpa's WWII photo album" — the name is the point; there's no useful date or place to sort it by.
• Already-organized folders — your painstaking Holidays/2019 Hawaii trip stays exactly as it is.
• Scans and screen captures — scanned prints carry the scanner's date, and screenshots have no photo details at all. Left alone, they won't land in Outliers or wander somewhere unexpected.

Change your mind anytime — right-click again and choose Include this folder when organizing.

3. Preview with What-If mode

Turn on What-If mode in the toolbar, then run Organize. The Activity tab shows exactly what would happen — which files move where — without changing a thing. When the plan looks right, turn What-If off and run it again for real.

4. Run Organize

Click Organize in the toolbar to sort the whole library — or right-click any folder and choose organize this folder to start small. With place-name lookups off (the default), everything is sorted using only what's inside your photos — nothing leaves your computer. GPS photos without a named place get a Location Pending marker you can fill in later. You'll end up with a structure like this:

2025/
  2025-07-26 Yellowstone National Park/
  2025-07-28 Grand Teton/
2026/
  2026-02-14/

• Photos land in folders named by the date they were taken, grouped under their year.
• When photos carry GPS data, the folder gets a real place name too.
• Photos taken close together in time and place share a folder — an evening that spills past midnight stays together.
• Folders with no recognizable date go to an Outliers folder for review — undated photos inside a dated folder stay right where they are. Nothing is guessed or hidden.
• Exact duplicates inside each date folder are flagged for removal as part of organizing.

5. Name the places that matter to you

The most important places will never come from a map — Home, Grandma's House, The Cottage. Name them yourself on the Locations tab (Add a Place) or by right-clicking a folder and choosing Name this place…. Then refine anytime: 2025-12-25 Grandma's House can become 2025-12-25 Christmas at Grandma's House — the date prefix always stays up front so sorting never breaks.

When you're ready for the gaps you haven't named, turn on location lookups — that's covered in Lookups & credits.

6. Review the Merge / Split tab

After organizing, the Merge / Split tab suggests folders that could be combined or separated. Each suggestion has a Preview — look it over, then Apply or Leave As Is. For splits that propose several folders, you can tick just the ones you want and use Combine Selected.

• Merge: same-day folders like "Camera import" and "Phone backup" become one.
• Split: a folder mixing two days — or two places — separates into clean folders.

7. Tidy what's left

• Mismatches tab. Photos whose embedded date doesn't match their folder are listed here — move each to the suggested folder, or fix its date with Update Date or Set a Different Date….
• Couldn't Process tab. Files SnapAtlas™ couldn't read during the scan land here with the reason — unusual formats, damaged files, half-downloaded cloud files. Most need no action; check before removing any.
• Wrong dates. Scanned prints and bad camera clocks stamp the wrong date. Right-click the folder and choose Set date & split to assign the real date and split it into proper folders. (Date editing uses ExifTool — one quick install, covered in the app's Help tab.)
• Mixed date formats. The Dates button renames every date folder to one consistent format — no more "July 29 2025" next to "2025-07-29".

HEIC photos

The HEIC button converts Apple HEIC photos to high-quality JPGs that open anywhere. Every detail — date, camera, GPS — carries over, and the originals are moved to a HEIC CONVERTED folder, not deleted.