PhotoTool Project Updates Ep 1 - Initial Steps Towards Scripts to Ease + Automate Import + Backup of Media Data

For the past few weeks, I've been having a blast hacking away at a pair of scripts for automating some steps of my current photo management workflow that have thus-far been very labour-intensive to perform:  Namely, importing/backing up photos and videos from my camera (R5)'s memory card, and doing the same with my phone (Android).

Motivations for These Projects + Technical challenges why existing solutions don't work:
* Camera: I can no longer use the "ImageBrowser Ex" tool that came with the tools I'd installed for my Canon 7D ages ago (i.e. it cannot be installed now, as Silverlight got EOL'd). This had thus far been allowing me to continue to import images the way I wanted for the past year on my old machines (i.e. import just the new/changed images since the last import, and group these images by date). 

 (NOTE: Having to use this approach in itself was also already a massive compromise after having to move from using the USB stick cable plugged into the camera, to now needing a card reader)

 The main problems trying to find a replacement are:

   1) Most downloaders practically assume that you only have *new* photos on a card, and hence, want to download absolutely everything every time (which really sucks on large format cards now).

       However, having majorly stuffed up multiple times on this front, I hate the concept of wiping photos from my memory cards immediately after downloading them to a machine. Between human error (e.g. deleting the wrong file / screwing up the copying / missing copying some) and hardware failures, it is way more important to me that there still exist multiple copies of my images before I'm certain I've properly protected them.

   2) The ones that don't suffer from that problem don't end up grouping photos in the types of folder structures I'm used to storing most of my library in - which was based off of what Canon's "EOS Utility" did out of the box

 

 * Phone:  I have enough images / videos / media / files on my phone now that the built-in software for a bunch of things falls over + gives up trying (i.e. notably the "Browse Files" intent/action hanging and then locking up whatever app triggered it, AND likely the "mtp" protocol stuff that Windows usually uses to try to access the phone as a file system randomly dying before even getting too far)

 Getting around all of these folders, and then trying to figure out what I'd previously grabbed already and what needing doing still was starting to get problematic - especially when needing to quickly backup photos on days / weeks when lots of other stuff are going on, and time to carefully be grabbing files to back them up (but without accidentally deleting or missing some) was starting to become a problem to manage safely.

 

Hence between both of these constraints, I ended up trying to hack up some tools that  can do all this file copying that I was in dire need of automating.