Help! - Time based file Renaming

[KPRussell]

Hey everyone,

I am shooting with another photographer and between all 4 cameras we have a ton of photographs per event that we want to ba atch rename in the order they were shot. Is anyone aware of software that will rename from the time the file was created or pulls the EXIF time data?

Thanks for your help!

[Bill C]

Kevin - Interesting question that got me looking at the various 'tools' I'm using .... then I remembered that I tried BREEZEBROWSER - this has exactly what you are looking for (assuming I understand the problem :) )
It supports several different formats and supports RAW....
It has a BATCH RENAME that has several options, including DATE/TIME from the EXIF!! There is a trial download available ...

http://www.breezesys.com/downloads.htm

I renamed a couple of files in batch mode, and it worked great ...
I started out with the typical DSCFnnnn format from the S2, and ended up with files named like this

040209_090138_1.jpg (this is in format yr, mo, day, hour, minute, second) .... This was a picture I took at 9:01:38 am on February 9th, 2004

Check it out... (I think the purchase price is only $29 - offers a lot more functionality than just renaming)

Bill

[Swampy]

Man. I should have asked that question a few weeks ago when I got back from my Alaska trip. I went through 6 digital cameras (2 mine, 4 from other people) and around 5,000 images and cut them back to 1050 images. With those 1050, I put them in order manually by time/date. Sheesh.

BTW - hope all your cameras time/dates are set right. :)

One camera would have hosed me with this as it was a day off. One other camera would have hosed me because of the daylight savings time, so it was one hour off. But to have that program would have been nice. :)

[KPRussell]

Bill thanks for the info and website! I just downloaded the evaluation and will let you know how it works! If this works it will be a H U G E timesaver!

Wow Bryan, you had one heck of a project pulling all those together manually. And we do have a syncing of the cameras before start any event or wedding BTW :p

[KPRussell]

Bill,

Thanks for the recommendation, it worked perfectly!! The best 50 bucks I have spent in a long time!

It took a geek to see the need and have the gumption to put out a product like this, too bad he's not a Nikon/Fuji instead of Canon guy, I won't hold that against him though.

Thanks again!

[Kerrie]

Can this be done using photoshop s browser? I'm able to sort by various methods there but have not been able to sort by camera's date ony the creation date in the computer...does not make sense to me.
I'm on a mac and breezebrowser does not support it.

[KPRussell]

I had not found a way for it to be done in PS CS either. I'm on both Mac & Windows so it being Microsoft didn't hurt me. If you have access to a PC somewhere else its well worth the investment though! Good Luck.

[Wichita Wayne]

I use a little program that I got for free called ReName. It really works great on trips and weddings where you might use more than one Digicam. Check out this thread:

http://www.fmount.com/forums/showthread.php?p=62655#post62655

I also like the way it only has one screen with everything available. No more NEXT...NEXT.....NEXT stuff. And it will show you the changes and allow you to undo the results if you forgot an option or detail.

[ACME]

Hey guys....

I see that thread is pretty old....HOWEVER, it's a pain if you have to get a special program for each specific task. Well, I already have and use ACD See to rotate and view my images....

It is crazy that people can create such a powerfull and BIG program just to view images. Yes you can do some other things w/ ACDSee but it's almost like learning photoshop to figure and play w/ all the toys....

Back to the point.....You can sort in ACDSee by any of the EXIF info.......
Because there is soooo much exif info you have to remember to not sort by date modified, because if you tweak a file and save it w/ a new name or over the top of it'self (yes I do this for those tiff purists :-) it will not sort right.

You have to choose the "date file created"

It's also fun to sort by exposure value, focal length, film speed, etc....
Once you have it sorted properly just do a batch rename. I prefer to delete the "junk" first so there are less holes in the file names (or you could delete and batch rename again)

IF you have two cameras and you can NOT get the time close enough.......
Just take a picture of the same thing having your partner go first then you one second later. (or take a picture of a watch w/ a second hand).....
In ACDSee you can batch change the time created which would be important if somone's clock was way off, You just need to know what time the start files needs to be and it corrects for this error.

~AdamN