Immage

Import

The importer copies photos off a card or a folder into your library, verifies every copy, and marks the photos you already have, on disk or in Immich. When it is done, the new photos open in Immage.

If you’ve used another editor: it is an import dialog that copies. The card is never written to, nothing is ever overwritten, and every copy is checked byte for byte before it counts.

Open it with Import at the top of the rail, or ⇧⌘I. It fills the window; Close goes back to editing.

1. Choose a source

  • Click a card to import its DCIM folder, or use ▸ to pick one folder on it.
  • Choose folder… imports from any folder.
  • Include subfolders, Skip _Rejected folders and Include videos narrow what is shown. If you cull in FastRawViewer first, pick its _Selected folder.

The grid fills in seconds, using the previews the camera stored. A raw and its JPEG show as one tile.

2. Choose what to import

New photos are selected for you. Photos already in your library are grayed out and marked In library; with Immich set up, ones already on the server are marked In Immich.

  • Click or ⇧-click to select; ⌘A selects all and ⌘D none.
  • Filter to All, New or Duplicates, or hide duplicates.
  • Sort by capture time, file name or folder.

3. Choose where they go

  • Destination: your library’s top folder.
  • The folder template sorts photos into dated folders. The default makes 2026/October. Tokens include {YYYY}, {MMMM}, {MM}, {DD}, {camera} and {original}; a / makes a subfolder.
  • A file name template can rename the files; a raw and its JPEG get the same name.
  • Paranoid verification (on by default) reads the card a second time to check it.

Dates come from when the photo was taken. If two files would get the same name, the second gets _1, and so on.

4. Import

Each file is copied, flushed to disk, read back and checked against the card. A copy that fails is tried again. At the end, a summary shows how many were Imported, Already there, Skipped and Failed.

Click Show in Immage to close the importer and open the first new photo, in its folder. The destination joins your Folders list.

Duplicates

A photo counts as already imported only when its contents match exactly. The name and size are checked first, then the capture time, then a full hash of the file.

With Immich set up (see Immich), the importer also looks each photo up on the server, by file name, size and capture time. An Immich problem never stops an import.

Notes

  • The importer keeps its own record of what it has imported, apart from the standalone Immporter app if you have that too.
  • Its Immich settings are the same ones as in Preferences › Immich.

This page is part of immage's own docs, at v0.41.1. View the source on GitHub.