Import photos from a camera or phone
Import photos and videos from a camera card or a phone folder with Ctrl+I: Portman2 files them by date, skips what it already has and turns HEIC into JPEG.
Press Ctrl+I, or click Import at the foot of the sidebar, to open the Import dialog. It has four tabs:
- Import — your import sources, to import from now, and Quick Import for a one-off.
- Auto Import — the sources that are watched and imported from automatically.
- Sources — where sources are added and edited.
- Conflicts — files waiting for you to decide their date. The tab shows how many are waiting.
Importing from your sources
The Import tab lists each source that is not watched, with a dot saying whether its folder can be reached and a count of the files in it. Tick the sources to import from, then:
- Dry run works out what would happen without changing anything;
- Import does it.
The refresh button checks the sources and their counts again.
After a run, a line sums it up: how many files were new, how many were already in the library, how many have dates that disagree, and how many it could not identify. The import's progress is shown below, with Stop.
What an import does
Each new file is filed into the photo folder by its date and given a name that includes a short fingerprint of its contents. An import from a source moves the files: each copy is checked against the original before the original is deleted from the source, because a camera card is a place to empty. (Quick Import copies instead, unless you tell it otherwise.) A file whose contents are already in the library is skipped. HEIC photos are converted to JPEG on the way in, and the untouched HEIC is kept in the originals folder. See How imports are filed.
What was imported appears under Last Import in the sidebar.