Batch Rename

IrfanView Batch Re-Name

Another in a series on making your photos more accessible and easier to work with. There are almost as many ways to manage photos as there are photographers, but this has worked well for me and, since I've gotten quite a few requests, I thought I'd share my personal methodology. It uses a great little utility called IrfanView, which can be downloaded HERE. It’s free, but the author accepts donations and they are well-deserved!

A key method in organizing photos is re-naming them to facilitate searching. If I want to find pictures of our mini-doxie, Chloe, I type her name into Picasa’s search window and before I get to the “o”, it has sorted through 50,000+ photos and returned the 141 pictures with her name in the file name.

For travel photos, I use a naming convention that includes the identity of the trip, the year, and any sub identity such as day of the week. The last part is a sequential number that starts with the oldest file and ascends. This helps me present them on the web or in a slide show in chronological order. (Be sure to set your camera’s time and date and, if you use more than one, synchronize them !) For this example I am re-naming some photos I took while on a business trip to Nashville.

Open IrfanView by double-clicking on any image in the directory that contains the files to be re-named.
From the menu, choose File > Batch Conversion/Rename. (or just type "b")
This window will appear:
Add the photos to the "Input files" processing list by double-clicking or highlighting them and clicking the "add" button. To make it easier to choose small numbers of photos to process, set the preview window to "Thumbnails". For a large number of images, I sort all the photos from the trip or event into a separate directory. If I have a multiple-day trip or event, I’ll sort the main directory by date and move all of the files from a day into their own sub-directory. That way, you can just click on “Add All”.

Click on the "Use this directory as output" button just below the preview pane. It will list your current directory as the destination for the re-named files. This will re-name your files in the current directory. Note: This assumes that you have made a copy of all your original files in a temporary directory and are working on the copies. That way, in case of disaster, you can start over fresh with a new copy of the originals (I copy images to the hard drive but leave them on the memory cards until I’m assured of the results).

Just below the output directory, click the "Batch rename" radio button and then click on the "Set rename options" button. This window will appear:

In the “Name pattern” type the descriptive name that you want to apply to the images. After the descriptive name type a “#” for each place you want in your sequential numbers. This is a great feature. Say you have 15 files; “Nashville 2007 #” will produce files from “Nashville 2007 1” to “Nashville 2007 15” but with no leading zero. Computers sort text place by place from left to right and putting leading zeroes in sequential file names make them sort correctly as if they were real numbers.

The example above will sort like this:

Nashville 2007 1.JPG

Nashville 2007 10.JPG

Nashville 2007 11.JPG

Nashville 2007 12.JPG

Nashville 2007 13.JPG

Nashville 2007 14.JPG

Nashville 2007 15.JPG

Nashville 2007 2.JPG

Nashville 2007 3.JPG

Nashville 2007 4.JPG

Nashville 2007 5.JPG

Nashville 2007 6.JPG

Nashville 2007 7.JPG

Nashville 2007 8.JPG

Nashville 2007 9.JPG

Changing it to “Nashville 2007 ##” will produce files from “Nashville 2007 01” to “Nashville 2007 15” and will sort like this:

Nashville 2007 01.JPG

Nashville 2007 02.JPG

Nashville 2007 03.JPG

Nashville 2007 04.JPG

Nashville 2007 05.JPG

Nashville 2007 06.JPG

Nashville 2007 07.JPG

Nashville 2007 08.JPG

Nashville 2007 09.JPG

Nashville 2007 10.JPG

Nashville 2007 11.JPG

Nashville 2007 12.JPG

Nashville 2007 13.JPG

Nashville 2007 14.JPG

Nashville 2007 15.JPG

Add as many “#”s as you need to ensure proper sorting. Since I often have over 100 but never more than 999 files in the same sequence, I usually just default to “###”. The “starting index” field tells the program where to start the sequence. This will almost always be “1”. I have occasionally had to add files to an existing series and use the index to start the add-on at 1 more than the last number that is already in the directory. (If my last file was Nashville 2007 15.JPG, I would set the starting index to 16). The “Increment” field determines the jump between consecutive numbers. I’ve never used anything except “1” here, but if you wanted the numbers to jump by 10, you would enter 10 and your sequence would come out “010, “020”, “030”, etc..

The “Replace text” fields would be used if you wanted to rename your files using the in-camera sequence. If you replaced “PICT” or “IMG” with “Nashville 2007”, your files would be renamed from “PICT_XXXX” to “Nashville 2007_XXXX”.

The “Copy original…”, “Move original…” and “Rename original…” radio buttons determine how source files will be handled. Oddly, if “Overwrite existing files” is checked and the output is set to the current directory, the result is the same regardless of which option you choose. Remember, if you are using a copy of your originals, there is no risk. You can always start over.

After you have set your options, click “OK”.

The last step before renaming is to sort the files. Click on the “Sort files” button next to the Input files list and this window will appear:

Sorting by date will put the number sequence in chronological order. (Remember my comment about synching the clocks on your cameras?)

All that’s left is to click “Start” and in a few seconds, your images will be renamed and ready to file away.

The instructions seem pretty long and complicated, but after a few practice runs, you’ll see what a great tool this can be. Picasa has a similar capability. You just highlight all the images you want to rename and press “F2” to bring up a dialog box. The problem is, they don’t give you a leading zeroes option, or any options really.

I was lucky enough to start this practice when I only had about a thousand photos on file. It took a while to rename them either in groups or individually and categorize them into directories like “Family”, “Travel”, “Pets”, “Floral”, etc.. Below those are sub-directories for specific people, trips and such. It now takes only a small amount of time to rename and sort whenever I empty the cameras and is well worth the effort. Picasa has made it even easier to find images, but the directory structure and renaming made it easier to set up Picasa (it only took 8 hours to organize the 40, 000 images that were on my system at the time!)

The end result is that it is very easy to bring up a picture or a series for viewing. Being able to re-live a vacation on a rainy Saturday afternoon is why we haul a camera half way around the world, isn’t it?

Happy shooting!

Dave

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