Need help with digital file renaming workflow.

[adam_nance]

Hey guys, when Jen and I shoot a wedding, we come back with maybe 1500 shots

spread on several flash cards with all sorts of wacky names DSC_2049 etc. I'd like to

be able to rename them all in chronological order with the last name of the groom

and a 4 digit numerical tag. Nance wedding 0001, nance wedding 0002...nance

wedding 1500.

 

How do I do this?

 

Sorting the photos using Windows Explorer by "Picture taken on" puts them all in the

right order. (Photoshop 7 has no similar sort function that I can find.)

 

I'd like to use Photoshop to rename them all because PS provides great control over

the naming. But I can't get them in the right order in the PS file browser.

 

If I use Explorer to rename them "Nance Wedding" they come out Nance wedding (1),

nance wedding (2), Nance wedding (3)...Nance Wedding (1500).

 

When I open this folder in the photoshop browser, these get out of order... nance

wedding (1), nance wedding (10), nance wedding (100), Nance wedding (1000).

 

This has been driving me nuts! There must be some simple way of dealing with this

that I'm not aware of. Anybody got any suggestions?

 

Thanks!

-Adam

[m_p7]

I use ACDSee for this; works great. It's about $50. There is usually a 30-day free demo. I also like it for quickly viewing and editing (ie. discarding) photos.

[ellis_vener_photography]

In Photoshop CS you can use the Browser to batch rename an entire folder. Since it is

unlikely that you'll shoot more than 9999 images on a particular shoot, choose the four

digital numbering format so you get 0001, 0002, ... , 01500.

 

so if you shot the wedding of

a client named Smith today the new title of the first image will be Smith-

wedding_041115_0001. You'll need to add the underscore manually between the name

fields. The "041114' is the YYMMDD format, but you can choose other date formats. You

could also reverse the client name ("Smith-wedding") and the date field if that makes

things easier for you to keep track the images.

[adam_nance]

Ellis, thank you. The problem is that I can't get them in order in the Photoshop

browser. I can't seem to sort multiple groups of images from multiple cards taken

nearly simultaneously into chronological order.

 

Because we have two cameras capturing images, we need a way to sort them so my

photos will interlace with Jen's. I can do this in Windows Explorer, but not in

photoshop. And when I sort and rename in Windows Explorer, they still don't come

out in order in the photoshop browser because the two programs sort numbers

differently.

 

MP, I'll look into ACDSee. If it's useful for flipping through and discarding images,

that would help too, since the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer plays inconsistent

tricks with colors. Thanks.

 

Anyone else?

 

-Adam

[zapped]

A freeware program I like reads EXIF data and can rename your images based on the exact time of the shot. That way your images from different cards/cameras will all be interleaved sequentially. I don't have it up right now, but I think you can add a prefix of your choosing, and I know the date/time format is very flexible.

 

It's called EXIFer, it's free & available here:

 

http://www.friedemann-schmidt.com/software/exifer

[peter_cofran]

http://www.1-4a.com/rename/download.htm

[m_p7]

I don't shoot digital, but I'm almost positive that ACDSee will read and sort based on EXIF data. And you can custom sort, too. My wife and I both shoot film at weddings, and we use it to edit, sort, and rename files for online proofing. We just drag thumbnails around the way we like the proofs to be in order, then batch rename. You can also output a list of the files to a text file. Try the demo. I'm going to look at the links posted here, also.

[derek_c.]

Another vote for ACDSee.<br>

I cannot think of any better programs for batch rename and batch rotation.<br>

Also picture browsing...

[chris_prinos]

when you sort in the photoshop cs browser, try setting the "sort by" menu to be sort by modified date instead of by creation date. That works for me with Canon-created files, ymmv. Among other software, I think BreezeBrowser has a nice way to time-compensate the exif data in a set of files from different cameras.

[khitrovg]

Adam,

I have been using Irfanview for years now, it is a wonderful freely dowloadable program from irfanview.com or just google for it. Not only it gives you flexibility to batch rename your files you can also batch resize them for your b&g retaining the original full resolution images.

 

Best,

 

Greg

[kimberly c.]

In PS just cange the view to "date created" and they will be in the

right order when you work on them, if they were in the right order

to begin with that is

[brandonhamilton]

yep... just sort by date in PS using the browser, then simply run a batch rename on the root folder (and all subs) and vuala. No extra programs needed.

[darren]

I use jhead for this. It really saved our bacon once when we thought we synchronised the date/time of all our camera bodies, but one of them ended up being an hour out. jhead was able to modify the EXIF date/time for the photos from just that body, so everything sorted in proper order.

 

The web site is:

http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/