# Some program for renaming and sorting photo



## jndm (Oct 6, 2013)

Hi, maybe someone can help.

I am looking for some small program, which will be able to do a batch rename according to metadata (date and time of capture) and sort photos into different folders according to date. If I can create some renaming template it would be awesome, but simple hardcoded time based renaming would be enough.

I know it can be done while importing into LR, but I wanna to do it before importing into LR.


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## Tony Jay (Oct 6, 2013)

Michal, given that Lr does these tasks so well it does beg the question why you would want to duplicate its functionality?

Tony Jay


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## Replytoken (Oct 7, 2013)

ImageIngester by Marc Rochkind will do as you have requested:  http://basepath.com/site/detail-ImageIngester.php .

--Ken


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## jndm (Oct 7, 2013)

@Tony - yes, LR do it pretty nice, but I am often out for several days with only laptop where I do not have LR installed. Another point is that I am often using two cameras (mainly DSLR + iphone). So what i need is to put photos from cards and phone to one place, rename them according to time so i have them at chronological order) and then I am sorting them to folders (one day one folder). I am then able to review photos day by day, delete tyhe bad ones etc. 

When I came home I am importing to LR only those selected (which also decrease size of that LR backup-while-import).

@Ken - thanks, it looks like what i am searching for!


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## Tony Jay (Oct 7, 2013)

jndm said:


> @Tony - yes, LR do it pretty nice, but I am often out for several days with only laptop where I do not have LR installed.


You are allowed to install Lr on your laptop as well as your workstation on one license as long as you do not use them at the same time.
I do an enormous amount of photography far from home.
The laptop (along with an EHD) does the trick.
I ingest, sort, keyword etc using Lr.
When I get home I export as catalog and then import as catalog, using the EHD and all the keywords and metadata comes across, no problem.

My advice - simply install Lr on your laptop using your current hardware and key.
You are not breaking the EULA.

Tony Jay


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## jndm (Oct 7, 2013)

It is not problem of licence, it is problem of HW and OS its old crap...


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## Replytoken (Oct 7, 2013)

Michal.

IIP should work fine on older machines.  I have used it as my front end since I started using LR.  I especially like that it can rename, convert to DNG and back up files to appropriate folders/discs with one command.  The program also offers a number of other features regarding metadata and keywording, so its worth trying.  Marc, it author, also posts here now and then.

Good luck,

--Ken


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## darky (Nov 5, 2013)

You can realize such simple tasks quite well and very fast with MSDOS batch files (*.bat) and usage of ExifTool. 
However you need some experience with MSDOS commands.
Here is a brief example of renaming DNG files from "original.dng" to to "yyyymmdd-HHMM_original.dng":

...
set cam=IMGP????
set exf=c:\programs\exiftool\exiftool.exe
if exist %cam%.dng for %%f in (%cam%.dng) do %exf% -d "%%Y%%m%%d-%%H%%M_%%%%lf.%%%%le" "-filename<CreateDate" %%f
...

It is worth the effort, because batch files are relatively simple and can be easily modified for specific purpose.


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## Selwin (Nov 6, 2013)

Hi Michal, just for your information: Did you know you can combine images from your dSLR and iPhone in Lightroom by using a smart collection with time criteria? I have two dSLRs and I never need to rename in order to mix the two sources in chronological order. Maybe you would not need to rename anything after all?


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## jndm (Nov 18, 2013)

Hello Selwin,
yes I know I can sort it directly in LR. What I am trying to achieve is to have some basic functionality independent on any software. That is why i use (oldschool sorting in directories by date and why i rename photos.

Another point why renaming photos is that number part is limited, so one day you will have again pic 001. I do not think it is good idea to have two different photosa with same name

But finally, I discovered that cool photo viewer I am using for basic selection (FastPictureViewer) have built in renamimg function, quite complex with templates etc. So now I am playing with that and it seems that it is exactly what i was looking for, in combination with exiftool it cover all my current needs.


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## Selwin (Nov 19, 2013)

If you can achieve what you want without using Lightroom at all, then by all means, go for it. If your decision would be to use Lightroom anyway at some stage, I suggest you do everything in Lightroom and use file renaming on import to have _9999 go to 10001 (and not another _0001). You can do all the rest of what you want to do using the LR library functions.


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## darky (Nov 19, 2013)

jndm said:


> ...yes I know I can sort it directly in LR. What I am trying to achieve is to have some basic functionality independent on any software. That is why i use (oldschool sorting in directories by date and why i rename photos. Another point why renaming photos is that number part is limited, so one day you will have again pic 001. I do not think it is good idea to have two different photosa with same name ...


Yes Michal, the correct date sorting also in FileManager for ALL files is also my requirement. Sometimes I have to mix images and videos from different cameras in one subdirectory. For this I rename to YYYYMMDD-hhmm_xx####.ext, where #### is the original number of image. Together with leading date/time this gives a unique number, but the reference to the original file number is still there. This is e.g. required if you need to refer to an image which was taken by someone else who does not rename his files.



> ... But finally, I discovered that cool photo viewer I am using for basic selection (FastPictureViewer) have built in renamimg function, quite complex with templates etc. So now I am playing with that and it seems that it is exactly what i was looking for, in combination with exiftool it cover all my current needs.


There are really of lot of cheap and free standalone tools for intelligent batch file renaming available (including the us of EXIF/IPTC data). The questions is, if these tools are flexible enough for you purpose and if the workflow between your other image tools (DAM, RAW-Editor, PhotoEditor, ...) is still convenient. First I used for renaming before/during import also FastPictureViewer, Lightroom, Idimager, IMatch, MediaPro, ... and finally free RenameMaster ... but finally I use free ExifTool with command line MSDOS batch files. 

Not only the speed and convenience of renaming is important. But also the combination with other image processes (DNG conversion, JPG conversion, preview modification, meta data manipulation, date corrections, GPS processing, watermark addition, ... ) can be important. The key question is, what you need and how much automatization is required? I like speed and convenience and therefor I invested a lot effort in using command line tools. Others might prefer an individual tool-chain of different programs with each their own appropriate GUI.


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## erro (Nov 19, 2013)

jndm said:


> Hello Selwin,
> yes I know I can sort it directly in LR. What I am trying to achieve is to have some basic functionality independent on any software. That is why i use (oldschool sorting in directories by date and why i rename photos.
> 
> Another point why renaming photos is that number part is limited, so one day you will have again pic 001. I do not think it is good idea to have two different photosa with same name
> ...



If you are happy with using FastPictureViewer and ExifTool, in addition to Lightroom, then I guess it is OK. But...

I personally do something very similar to what you do, I think. But I do it all with Lightroom. I import all photos to a date-based folder structure (YYYY/MM/DD). After import, I select all photos and apply a renaming template that renames all photos to "YYYY-MM-DD hhmmss seq#.extension". This makes all photos sort nicely in time-order, even if I have used 7 different cameras at the same time. And the names are available for the sorting outside of LR as well. The filenames will be unique down to a second, and with the original sequence-number added as an extra distinguisher, and as a reference back to the original name. And all this is done with just a few clicks inside LR.


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## Selwin (Nov 19, 2013)

Hi Robert, good suggestion. The problem is that he wants to do it on a device that doesn't have Lightroom installed or can be installed.


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## erro (Nov 19, 2013)

OK, sorry, missed that part…..


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## phcorrigan (Nov 28, 2013)

jndm said:


> Hi, maybe someone can help.
> 
> I am looking for some small program, which will be able to do a batch rename according to metadata (date and time of capture) and sort photos into different folders according to date. If I can create some renaming template it would be awesome, but simple hardcoded time based renaming would be enough.
> 
> I know it can be done while importing into LR, but I wanna to do it before importing into LR.



I thought I posted this once, but I don't see it, so if this is a duplicate I apologize.

Take a look at FastStone Image Viewer(http://www.faststone.org) for Windows orXnViewMP (http://www.xnview.com) for Linux, Mac OS and Windows. Either one can do the kind of batch renaming that you want, but I don't know about sorting into folders by date.


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## Rob_Cullen (Nov 29, 2013)

Have a look at LUPAS RENAME     
Could be downloaded from- http://lupas-rename.en.softonic.com/
I have used it frequently with great success. It has columns that you can sort by name, date, etc.


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## Navar (May 13, 2015)

You can have a look at PhotoTagger program. Probaby it does what you want. PhotoTagger renames photo's file name acording to it's date, description and selected tags. It's convenient for me. http://phototagger.org/en/


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## Hoggy (Jun 6, 2015)

... Or you could use whatever program to the way I rename in LR - it will make sure you never have 2 photos with the same name (EVER), and also be usable outside of LR for sorting..  Plus the biggest bonus is being able to look at the name in the filmstrip to determine most anything you might need to know without going to Library (I use it most for determining EV, since those are usually brackets for me).  Here goes nothing!::
(I couldn't copy&paste from the actual tokens area, but a descriptive template is..)
DateYYMMDD_(OrgFn)_ISO_ExpComp_EXP_mm!35mm_Model

Of course, you could add the time too, but I don't shoot often enough here..

:mrgreen:


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