# Filenames by external editors



## 69Barracuda318 (Jan 10, 2015)

When I edit photos in an external editor, "-Edit" automatically gets appended to the end of the filename, but I would like the filename change to be something more informative.  For example, is there a way I can set it so "-D2" is appended when I edit in Nik Dfine 2?  It would be helpful to know which processes have been done on each photo and in what order.


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## Jim Wilde (Jan 10, 2015)

Hi, welcome to the forum.

AT the bottom of the Preferences>External Editing tab there is a File Naming template editor which allows you to create your own file naming scheme for externally edited files.


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## clee01l (Jan 11, 2015)

Welcome to the forum,  On the Preferences External Editor tab, there is a file naming template section. Unfortunately you only get one template for all of the External editors defined. Such a file template is what is generating the "-Edit". being appended to the file name now.  You can create your own custom naming templates  A template of {Filename}-D2 would get you what you want for Nik Dfine2, but unfortunately you need to change the template used for each other external editor  to they will have the "-D2" appended to the filename too.


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## 69Barracuda318 (Jan 11, 2015)

T*hanks a lot Jim!  *

It took me a little while how to figure out how to set up the naming.  For each external editor preset I changed the external file naming template by choosing FILENAME, then EDIT, then added my suffix ("_D2" for example), then saved it as a new file naming preset.  

However when I edit a photo in an external editor, the file gets renamed using the last external editor preset I made.  In other words, if the last preset I saved was for Define 2 (_D2) and I edit a photo in Viveza 2, it appends "_D2" to the filename instead of "_V2" which I had set up for Viveza.  What am I missing?


*clee01l,
*
Thanks for the reply.  So are you saying that even though I change the external file naming template to match each external editor, LR only will use one (that last one I made) for all external editors?


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## clee01l (Jan 11, 2015)

69Barracuda318 said:


> *clee01l,
> *
> Thanks for the reply.  So are you saying that even though I change the external file naming template to match each external editor, LR only will use one (that last one I made) for all external editors?


 What I am saying is that you can have many file naming templates (and it sounds like you have done that.)   The file naming template that gets used when you call an external editor is the one selected in the External Editing tab of preferences.  This represents a weak design of this part of LR.   If you want to use a different file naming template for different editors, you need to pre-select the one you want from the list in Preferences before you can call the External Editor after making the template assignment in Preferences.  If this sounds like a PIA, then that is because it is.   If all of your external Editors are the Nik collection, you could do one template (e.g. {Filename}-Nik) that could be used for Dfine2,  Vivesa2, SFX-2, etc.  However if you use another external editor (Photoshop for example) It is still going to be named with which ever naming template is selected in the Preferences.


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## 69Barracuda318 (Jan 11, 2015)

Great, thanks.  Definitely a weakness in the LR design.  Appreciated.


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