In this article:
What is Ingest?
Ingesting is the process of copying image files, usually from a memory card or camera, onto your computer or an external hard drive.
Using Ingest in Narrative helps you:
Copy and organise your files with ease: Easily copy files from your memory card into neatly organized folders on your Mac or external drive
Secure your most important assets: Your photos are safe once they've been copied, even if something were to happen to your memory card
Get faster Image Assessments: Your images get scanned as soon as they are copied, meaning more advanced features will be ready sooner.
How to Ingest with Narrative
When creating a project, click on 'Copy (ingest) images from a memory card onto a computer or hard drive'
Choose your Memory Card
Have more than one memory card from your shoot? You can ingest from multiple memory cards by choosing add another memory card to keep going!
Pick your Destination Folder from the Finder window. If you haven't created a folder, you can create it from this dialogue. All images are selected for ingest by default. You can alter this by clicking on the tick boxes.
Now Narrative will Ingest (copy) your images then import them into the project.
Note – ingest does not yet automatically create a new folder for your images in your destination, so if you ingest to a folder that already contains images, all images in the destination folder will be shown in the project.
Beta Feature: Quick Ingest
If you’ve been added as a beta user, you’ll have access to our new Quick Ingest feature.
Quick Ingest is designed to get you from SD card to project faster than ever. Simply plug in your SD card and the Quick Ingest screen will appear automatically. From there, your photos are grouped into sessions so you can quickly choose what you want to ingest and turn into a project.
When the Quick Ingest screen appears:
Select the checkbox next to the sessions you want to ingest
Choose the destination folder where your images should be copied
Click the Copy Photos + Create Project button to start the ingest
That’s it. Your photos will be copied, and a new project will be created for you in one smooth step!
Note: Sessions are currently grouped based on a two-hour gap between shoots. If there is more than two hours between photos, a new session will be created.
Quick Ingest is still in beta and feedback is incredibly valuable. If you have thoughts, questions, or run into anything unexpected, please contact our Support team using the chat icon in the bottom right.
Managing folder structure, duplicates and file names
Include subfolders
When choosing where to ingest from, you can enable Include subfolders. This shows all images in the selected folder and any subfolders inside it. If this option is turned off, only images from the selected folder will appear.
Maintain folder structure
If Maintain folder structure is enabled, Narrative will recreate the same folder structure from your memory card in the destination folder. If this is disabled, all selected images will be copied into a single destination folder.
Change/Locate Destination Folder
To change the destination folder or reveal it in Finder, click the three-dot menu on the ingest screen.
Don't include duplicates
If don't include duplicates is enabled, Narrative will skip copying files that already exist in the destination folder. Existing files will not be overwritten.
Rename your images
You can bulk rename images during ingest by enabling Rename files in the bottom-right corner of the ingest screen.
By default, Narrative uses the format:
YYMMDD-Project Name-Sequence
Example:
20220101-New Years Shoot-0001
Click Default formula to customize the naming format. Once you’ve created a format you like, select Save as default to use it for future ingests.
How to ingest more images after creating a project
If you’ve already created a project and realize you missed a memory card or want to copy additional images into the same folder and project, you can ingest more images at any time.
Go to the File menu and choose the ingest option to continue copying images into the existing destination folder and project.
