Why doesn't Cannon have dates on photos and put in folders so when you download you can find them?

[LearnToDrawFAST]

Does Cannon have a button on the camera that causes photos to download to a folder with the date it was shot on the Folder?

It takes an insane amount of time to find the 2 pcitures you just shot when you have to weed through 2,000+ shots.

[TCampbell]

That's up to the software that you use to unload the images from the camera.  

Canon's EOS Utility (included with every Canon EOS digital camera) does actually allow you to customize the file naming convention to your liking -- as well as allows you to set the destination folder where it will save these images.  You can find that in the Preferences settings for EOS Utility.

And then there are the photo apps designed to digital asset management.  Lightroom is such an app and is extremely popular.

[ebiggs1]

The ideal software for you is Photoshop Elements. You are the customer it is aimed at.

It is inexpensive but is not free. 

[hsbn]

There are a lot of software that can download your image and put them into dated-folder such as Lightroom. Alternatively, you can have OS sort by file date. It's not that hard.

[Skirball]

Lol! Another Photoshop Elements recommendation, this time for date stamping.  I love it.

OP: Canon does put the date on the photos, it's in the meta data.  Any program can read this data, including your operating system.  I'm not familiar with Apple's OS, but on Windows you simply open up your folder, right click on the columns at the top, and select "Date Created" to add a column that shows the date and time it was created.  in Win 7 you can also select "Arrange by Day" on the top right and it will organize by day.  If you want to put it in a folder based on the date you'll either need to write a script, download one, or get any photo editing organization program as they pretty much all do it.  But you don't need to spend $90 to do this basic operation.

[TCampbell]

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@Skirball wrote:

I'm not familiar with Apple's OS, but on Windows you simply open up your folder, right click on the columns at the top, and select "Date Created" to add a column that shows the date and time it was created.  in Win 7 you can also select "Arrange by Day" on the top right and it will organize by day.  If you want to put it in a folder based on the date you'll either need to write a script, download one, or get any photo editing organization program as they pretty much all do it.  But you don't need to spend $90 to do this basic operation.

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I'm not sure if the OP is on a Mac (I don't think they indicated which OS) but these same options are available on the Mac.  You can sort by Date Created, Date Added, Date Modified, or Date Last Opened.  You an use "Automator Actions" to sort, move to new folders, etc. as well.  But probably it's not necessary because one of the default views on the Mac is to show all your files sorted by date added (regardless of which folder contains them.)  That makes sense with the assumption that most people tend to work with the files they just added to their computer.

[Skirball]

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@TCampbell wrote:

I'm not sure if the OP is on a Mac (I don't think they indicated which OS) but these same options are available on the Mac.

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I assumed they were, just couldn't say from personal experience.  My point really, was that this is an extremely basic operation, something that any operating system can do.  It's not necessary to purchase photo editing software for it.

As far as the default view.  Again, I don't know mac, but on Windows the default is Date Created.  I mispoke above, you actually want "Date Taken", which will pull the data from the EXIF instead of just listing when the file was created (i.e. when you DL'd from your card).

[lniles]

Yup, what others said.  If the date and time is set correctly on the camera, that data is in the photos.  It's just a matter of you knowing where to look.