Best Way to Import Star-Rated Photos from Multiple Folders into Lightroom?

[macomacoTimTam1025]

Hi everyone,

I'm running into a workflow issue with Photo Mechanic, and I'm hoping to hear how others have tackled similar challenges.

I frequently shoot American football games—3 to 4 games per day—and often end up with close to 20,000 photos in a single day. Photo Mechanic is an essential partner for me when it comes to quickly rating these massive numbers of images. However, there’s one issue that’s been slowing me down significantly: when I bring star-rated photos into Lightroom, I have to perform separate import operations for each folder on the card.

Let me explain.

Canon mirrorless cameras (like mine) automatically split files into multiple subfolders within the `DCIM` directory once the image count exceeds 9999. So I typically end up with folders like `100EOSR6`, `101EOSR6`, `102EOSR6`, and so on. While the folder names update correctly, the file names inside them loop back to `IMG_0001` again, so it's common to have duplicate file names across folders.

Here’s my current workflow:

1. I ingest the full `DCIM` folder into Photo Mechanic.
2. I go through each folder (`100EOSR6`, `101EOSR6`, etc.), rating the images. I give ★1 to the ones I want to edit in Lightroom.
3. I filter for ★1 images, select them all, and drag them into the Lightroom Library for import.

Here’s the problem: Photo Mechanic doesn’t seem to support browsing *across multiple subfolders* at once (like Lightroom does), which means I have to repeat the drag-and-drop import into Lightroom *separately* for each folder.

If this import only took a minute per folder, I wouldn’t mind. But for some reason, even importing just a few files from Photo Mechanic into Lightroom via drag-and-drop takes **at least 15 minutes** each time. So doing this three times (once per folder) becomes a serious time sink.

I’ve considered merging all the subfolders into a single folder (e.g. renaming to something like `EOSR6_Combined`) before loading them into Photo Mechanic. But because duplicate file names are very likely between folders, that quickly becomes complicated. I even tried writing a batch script to rename files per folder, but running that correctly every time is tedious and error-prone.

Ideally, Photo Mechanic would support viewing all images inside subfolders when pointing to the parent folder (e.g. show all contents of `DCIM`, including `100EOSR6`, `101EOSR6`, etc.). That way, I could filter for ★1 images once and import them into Lightroom in a single operation—even if it takes 45 minutes, I can walk away and let it run.

Personally, I’d rather have one long import I can step away from than three shorter ones I have to babysit.

If anyone else has run into this issue and found a solution or workaround, I’d really appreciate hearing your tips!

Thanks so much in advance.

[Kirk Baker]

Let me explain.

Canon mirrorless cameras (like mine) automatically split files into multiple subfolders within the `DCIM` directory once the image count exceeds 9999. So I typically end up with folders like `100EOSR6`, `101EOSR6`, `102EOSR6`, and so on. While the folder names update correctly, the file names inside them loop back to `IMG_0001` again, so it's common to have duplicate file names across folders.

Here’s my current workflow:

1. I ingest the full `DCIM` folder into Photo Mechanic.
2. I go through each folder (`100EOSR6`, `101EOSR6`, etc.), rating the images. I give ★1 to the ones I want to edit in Lightroom.
3. I filter for ★1 images, select them all, and drag them into the Lightroom Library for import.

Here’s the problem: Photo Mechanic doesn’t seem to support browsing *across multiple subfolders* at once (like Lightroom does), which means I have to repeat the drag-and-drop import into Lightroom *separately* for each folder.

Photo Mechanic does support browsing a folder and all of its sub-folders in a single contact sheet window.  You have to open the folder with the Navigator or the Favorites and choose one of the 'Folder and subfolders' options.

If this import only took a minute per folder, I wouldn’t mind. But for some reason, even importing just a few files from Photo Mechanic into Lightroom via drag-and-drop takes **at least 15 minutes** each time. So doing this three times (once per folder) becomes a serious time sink.

I’ve considered merging all the subfolders into a single folder (e.g. renaming to something like `EOSR6_Combined`) before loading them into Photo Mechanic. But because duplicate file names are very likely between folders, that quickly becomes complicated. I even tried writing a batch script to rename files per folder, but running that correctly every time is tedious and error-prone.

Photo Mechanic's Ingest feature can flatten the file system on the card and by using Ingest's renaming feature, sequence all of your images with a linear set of numbers that don't collide.  Then once you review and rate your photos, you can do a single import into Lightroom.

HTH,

-Kirk

[Max Lemesh]

Yeah, what Kirk said!
I use this feature all the time, view multiple folder, select 1 star images from all of them, import to LR/C1 all at once in their respective folders