# File renaming situation



## jflick2896 (Aug 16, 2008)

Hello, I have a situation –

A group of us 3-or 4 who ake photos of running events such as ½ marathons, marathons 
Etc. 

On any one shoot we may take thousands of images. I’m trying to determine if LR is the tool for us.
One of our most daunting tasks is to rename each image with a participant’s bib number or numbers quickly
The format of the file name could be "bib1_bib2_bjb3_event_date_secqnum" and renaming the files during capture from the camera is easy, 

The hard part at the moment is reviewing each image for a visual bib number(s) the visible number needs to be keyed quickly and appended to the front of existing file name and move on.
Most file re-naming applications render a small thumbnail not large enough to read a bib number , in LR you can enlarge the image.

Any thoughts to if there is a plug-in or other application that could accomodate the quick re-name issue.?  (OCR woud be the best way, but I have not found it yet)

Thanks
John
Aka: Flick2896


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## jimburgess (Aug 16, 2008)

Consider entering the bib number(s) in a metadata field, e.g., Caption, as you browse through the images in loupe view. When finished with the tagging, batch rename all the photos using the metadata field as part of the new filename. Beware of some quirky behavior on LR's part when entering data, though. It tries to "help", and in this kind of application is actually more of a hinderence than help. Best way to see what I mean is to try it.


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## rcannonp (Aug 16, 2008)

jimburgess said:


> It tries to "help", and in this kind of application is actually more of a hinderence than help.



You can turn that off in the Metadata panel of the Catalog Settings.


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## stasber (Aug 16, 2008)

For my 2 cents worth, it strikes me that the point of renaming files with bib numbers is for identification at a later date, and if this is the case, then I'd suggest adding the bib numbers as keywords, and decide on a convention to name this keyword for consistency, such as bib123, Bib-123, etc.

To help you along, create a parent keyword for each event (call it EventName) and make each bib a child within that parent.

When you import you can rename the files to your 'event_date_secqnum' and include in the Keyword panel your EventName keyword, which will later become the parent. As you run through the pics and manually add each 'bib' keyword, those keywords will automatically be added to the Keyword List. You can then drag them into (onto) the EventName and they will become children of EventName.

If you wanted, your 'bib' keyword convention could be 'EventName-Bib-123', you could add the 'EventName-Bib-' as a keyword in the Import dialog, then select it from the Suggested Keywords panel, or Recent Keywords panel and manually append the '123' before hitting enter to commit. Similarly with the 'Help' if you start typing 'Even..' it'll flag/prompt you with the matching keywords, which you can select and then append with the '123'. (If your convention is Bib-EventName-123 then as you type 'bib-' you'll get an increasing number of matches as you add new events, as the search is from available/existing keywords - just a thought.) 

Just an observation about using 'Bib123' as opposed to 'EventName-Bib-123' is that you can only have one keyword in one place - so if you go for the parent/child idea, you can only have 'Bib123' once, under one parent. 'Bib123' would collect all 'Bib123's regardless of which event they were in. Hence 'EventName-Bib-123' would be a unique bib to an event.


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## jflick2896 (Aug 17, 2008)

Thats more then two cents worth, thanks for the feedback.  I need to think about how this is going to work. 

You're correct the file renaming is for later identification, however, you may have three pictures of bib-123, looking like this 123_'8'8'8_'''1, 123_123_'8'8'8_'''2 , 123_'8'8'8_'''3 you would want the select to return all three images for review or purchase.


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## stasber (Aug 17, 2008)

If the select is within LR for review or purchase, then clicking on the keyword for bib-123 in the Keyword List will instantly show you all photos tagged with bib-123.


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## jimburgess (Aug 17, 2008)

jflick2896 said:


> You're correct the file renaming is for later identification, however, you may have three pictures of bib-123, looking like this 123_'8'8'8_'''1, 123_123_'8'8'8_'''2 , 123_'8'8'8_'''3 you would want the select to return all three images for review or purchase.



Who is doing the selecting, and how are they doing it? Just you, or potential customers? What application? Web-based? All this and more enters into the process. Sometimes keywords aren't the most effective way for potential buyers to find stuff on websites.


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