May 12, 2010

Notes on Naming Files

Recently I have had a couple of requests for digital photos that I took a few years ago. They took a while to find because at the time I filed them chronologically but didn't have a consistent system for naming them. Thus it took me longer than I would have liked to find them.

They were "filed" before I worked out a system of renaming every picture as I downloaded it from the camera. Now I do this using Adobe® Bridge and I'll describe the process in case you need a system for doing this.

I copy files off the camera frequently, often the same day as I take the photographs. This way I minimize the chance of losing them, plus I can keep my blog up to date with fresh images.
Above: Here I've inserted a memory card from a camera and navigated to it in Adobe Bridge. I've highlighted the pictures that are of the same place because I can give them the same name followed by a number.

Adobe Bridge, which comes bundled with Photoshop, has a tool called Batch Rename. This is my key to the system because it allows me to quickly rename multiple photos as I copy them to the computer.

On the memory card the images were named with a code and series of consecutive numbers. For any pictures worth saving on my computer, I want names that help identify them so I can easily find them later.
The eight photos that I selected above were all taken at Packsaddle Ridge Golf Course. Therefore I gave them all the name "packsaddle" on the next pop-up screen. Clicking the plus sign provided me with another line which I use to assign a starting number for the series of images. Personally I like to use the last three numbers that were assigned by the camera.

In this case, I put them in a folder on my computer that I created for the current month. If they were for a particular website other than my blog, I would use a special folder for that site.

After I've saved all the new photos with appropriate names, I can open this month's working folder in Bridge and click on an image to open in Photoshop. Usually I brighten the photo and crop if needed.

Since I process a fair number of photos this way, I've create another folder for the files that I've worked on this month and I save them there as Photoshop (PSD) files. I also have a folder for pictures that are ready to print, but that's another story.
Every day or so I back up my computer, an easy process because of an Apple® program called Time Machine. Even if I change computers, I'll be able to find photos on the storage device by searching by name or date.

P.S. You can search from Bridge and see a display of pictures found.

No comments:

Post a Comment

The View from Squirrel Ridge features thousands of views of the Shenandoah Valley and surrounding area. I post frequently so please visit often.

Your comments are appreciated. If you are responding to a post older than a few days, your comment will be held until we have a chance to approve it. Thanks for your patience!

Sorry, anonymous comments cannot be accepted because of the large number of spam comments that come in that way. Also, links that are ads will be deleted.