naming files

AKA Gray Asphalt wrote:

I’m trying to name my pic files is a way to make them easier to deal with.
So far, I’ve been putting the year/month/day of original picture first, then the time and then the original number that the cameras give to the pic and finally a letter indicating which camera took the picture.
Any ideas? Have you tried anything like this? I use "The Rename" to get the date, time, etc into the file name.

I think it will be easier to put the pics in proper folders and eliminate dupes.

Depending on the camera all this and more are already in the file.

I would also suggest that you take some time to consider how you are going to sort and fine images by subject, type etc.

Personally I find extra long file names far more of a bother than they are worth.

Also consider using directories to store them to help sort them.

Finally I suggest some sort of software organizer program. They generally are far better than trying to rely on the name.

—
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

"Joseph Meehan" wrote in message

AKA Gray Asphalt wrote:

I’m trying to name my pic files is a way to make them easier to deal with.
So far, I’ve been putting the year/month/day of original picture first, then the time and then the original number that the cameras give to the pic and finally a letter indicating which camera took the picture.
Any ideas? Have you tried anything like this? I use "The Rename" to get the date, time, etc into the file name.

I think it will be easier to put the pics in proper folders and eliminate dupes.

Depending on the camera all this and more are already in the file.
I would also suggest that you take some time to consider how you are going to sort and fine images by subject, type etc.

Personally I find extra long file names far more of a bother than they are worth.

Also consider using directories to store them to help sort them.
Finally I suggest some sort of software organizer program. They generally are far better than trying to rely on the name.
—
Joseph Meehan

Dia duit

Thanks. I put spaces between the ‘fields’ in the name. I do use Elements to organize the photos. I put the date first so that I can
reorganize them easily if they are put in folders by category. And I try to export EXIF information from Elements so that if the catalogs get corrupted I can reconstruct them more easily because the categories come in as tags.

I’ve got a lot of photos, maybe 8K and I’ve had to start over twice because of some program error or disk error, so I’m trying to find a way to keep as much information in the files themselves and having some of the info in the filenames seems more convenient that trying to extract everything using an EXIF program like Exifer, which I can’t seem to find a manual for.

I put 5 spaces between the name, date, and other info and use "The Rename" to put the data into the file names. I wondered if anyone else was doing something similar and if they had better categories.

AKA Gray Asphalt wrote:

"Joseph Meehan" wrote in message

AKA Gray Asphalt wrote:

I’m trying to name my pic files is a way to make them easier to deal with.

There might be something in here to help.

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/metalogging/index.html

I usually use Y.M.D-Location-subject-number(001,002,etc)

Year month date keeps them in chronological order. Location keeps all the pictures from the same place together doing a search. Subject tells me what the picture is. The number keeps all this in chronological order.

HTH.

—

Don`t Worry, Be Happy

Sandy
—

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"Sandy Birrell" wrote in message

AKA Gray Asphalt wrote:

"Joseph Meehan" wrote in message

AKA Gray Asphalt wrote:

I’m trying to name my pic files is a way to make them easier to deal with.

There might be something in here to help.

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/metalogging/index.html
I usually use Y.M.D-Location-subject-number(001,002,etc)
Year month date keeps them in chronological order. Location keeps all the pictures from the same place together doing a search. Subject tells me what the picture is. The number keeps all this in chronological order.
HTH.

That is a great resource. It showed me that there is no real organized standard but a lot of good ideas and that my individual (family) type pictures don’t need a big hierarchy. Mostly I was hoping to avoid finding a great system after I had already done a bunch of work and it seems my system is good for me although it wouldn’t be good for commercial photos or other applications.

Date is important for me because a family history thing uses date as an important part. Thanks to Elements I can set up other categories like weddings, parties, pictures of individuals, etc. as categories and call them up when needed.

Thanks again, you guys freed me up to continue while not worrying that I was ignoring ideas that might be out there.

: -)

"AKA Gray Asphalt" wrote in message

"Sandy Birrell" wrote in message

AKA Gray Asphalt wrote:

"Joseph Meehan" wrote in message

AKA Gray Asphalt wrote:

I’m trying to name my pic files is a way to make them easier to deal with.

There might be something in here to help.

http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/metalogging/index.html
I usually use Y.M.D-Location-subject-number(001,002,etc)
Year month date keeps them in chronological order. Location keeps all the pictures from the same place together doing a search. Subject tells me what the picture is. The number keeps all this in chronological order.
HTH.

That is a great resource. It showed me that there is no real organized standard but a lot of good ideas and that my individual (family) type pictures don’t need a big hierarchy. Mostly I was hoping to avoid finding a great system after I had already done a bunch of work and it seems my system is good for me although it wouldn’t be good for commercial photos or other applications.

Date is important for me because a family history thing uses date as an important part. Thanks to Elements I can set up other categories like weddings, parties, pictures of individuals, etc. as categories and call them up when needed.

Thanks again, you guys freed me up to continue while not worrying that I was ignoring ideas that might be out there.

: -)

If you are going to use the date (and it should preferably precede the proper filename) make sure you use the format yyyy-mm-dd in that order (i.e. the good old French Canadian date format) and of course the 24 hour format for time. The dashes make it easier for the eye to read the date.

I used to name my files in this fashion in the good old DOS days but without the dashes and only yy which left me with space for only 2 characters, say hr for ‘house renovation’. Thus a file name would be something like hr910731.txt which would automatically show all documents for house renovation together and in the right order. The alternative method was to use ymmdd which left room for a third character at the end of the filename where there could be more than one document per day on any given subject. This would serve me fine until the next decade and if the third character preferably after the dd would allow for up to 9 documents per subject per day which made the system good for the duration of the decade.

I used this system till very recently notwithstanding the march of time and Windows XP and long filenames etc and might even go back to it though I must say I have got such a comprehensive folder system that I hardly need it any longer.
—
choro-nik
*******

[snip]

If you are going to use the date (and it should preferably precede the proper filename) make sure you use the format yyyy-mm-dd in that order (i.e. the good old French Canadian date format) and of course the 24 hour format for time. The dashes make it easier for the eye to read the date.

Yes, the year first, then the month and day. I use spaces between the date and time to make it easier to read. In that format I can sort by name and it puts the pics in chronical order and since the date modified can change when a file is copied, I always have the date and time right there.

I used to name my files in this fashion in the good old DOS days but without
the dashes and only yy which left me with space for only 2 characters, say hr for ‘house renovation’. Thus a file name would be something like hr910731.txt which would automatically show all documents for house renovation together and in the right order. The alternative method was to use ymmdd which left room for a third character at the end of the filename where there could be more than one document per day on any given subject. This would serve me fine until the next decade and if the third character preferably after the dd would allow for up to 9 documents per subject per
day which made the system good for the duration of the decade.

And, as you obviously know, you can search for files with ? in the search pattern and so if the HR was in the … say 11th thru 12th position, you would search ??????????HR*.txt to get all files with the HR there. I just checked this out to be sure and learned something interesting: If there are spaces in the file name, apparently, you have to put quotation marks around the expression or the search thing in XP will treat each side of the search …. each side of the spaces as seperate file names … but it does work if you use quotations.

I used this system till very recently notwithstanding the march of time and
Windows XP and long filenames etc and might even go back to it though I must say I have got such a comprehensive folder system that I hardly need it
any longer.
—
choro-nik
*******

I bet you have the files organized by folders with years and subfolders of months. I wonder if many programs would open shortcuts say if you searched for all of the files related to a certain subject and then made shortcuts and put them in a folder so that you would have a folder of a subject but not use up all of the space the actual files would take up.

"AKA Gray Asphalt" wrote in message

[snip]

If you are going to use the date (and it should preferably precede the proper filename) make sure you use the format yyyy-mm-dd in that order (i.e. the good old French Canadian date format) and of course the 24 hour
format for time. The dashes make it easier for the eye to read the date.

Yes, the year first, then the month and day. I use spaces between the date and time to make it easier to read. In that format I can sort by name and it puts the pics in chronical order and since the date modified can change when a file is copied, I always have the date and time right there.

I used to name my files in this fashion in the good old DOS days but without
the dashes and only yy which left me with space for only 2 characters, say
hr for ‘house renovation’. Thus a file name would be something like hr910731.txt which would automatically show all documents for house renovation together and in the right order. The alternative method was to use ymmdd which left room for a third character at the end of the filename
where there could be more than one document per day on any given subject.
This would serve me fine until the next decade and if the third character preferably after the dd would allow for up to 9 documents per subject per
day which made the system good for the duration of the decade.

And, as you obviously know, you can search for files with ? in the search pattern and so if the HR was in the … say 11th thru 12th position, you would search ??????????HR*.txt to get all files with the HR there. I just checked this out to be sure and learned something interesting: If there are spaces in the file name, apparently, you have to put quotation marks around the expression or the search thing in XP will treat each side of the search … each side of the spaces as seperate file names … but it does work if you use quotations.

I used this system till very recently notwithstanding the march of time and
Windows XP and long filenames etc and might even go back to it though I must say I have got such a comprehensive folder system that I hardly need it
any longer.
—
choro-nik
*******

I bet you have the files organized by folders with years and subfolders of months. I wonder if many programs would open shortcuts say if you searched for all of the files related to a certain subject and then made shortcuts and put them in a folder so that you would have a folder of a subject but not use up all of the space the actual files would take up.

The possibilities are endless, as the saying goes! But one has got to be systematic. Personally I like the hyphen as a visual aid at least between the year and month day i.e. 2006-0731 would stand for year 2006 July 31st. If you wanted to insert the time as well it would then be 2006-0731_2359_ etc. I prefer to use the _ underscore to separate the different values such as date_time_rest-of-filename.ext

Also I believe that Apple software does not like spaces or CAPS in filenames. Don’t know if this still holds true but it is something to keep in mind should you ever want to go over to the enemy side!!!

Actually I might soon desert and go AWOL…. and take a trip to the SUSE Linux side across no man’s land! Hope I don’t get blown up crossing the minefields!
—
choro-nik
*******

"choro-nik" wrote in message

"AKA Gray Asphalt" wrote in message

[snip]

If you are going to use the date (and it should preferably precede the proper filename) make sure you use the format yyyy-mm-dd in that order (i.e. the good old French Canadian date format) and of course the 24 hour
format for time. The dashes make it easier for the eye to read the date.

Yes, the year first, then the month and day. I use spaces between the date and time to make it easier to read. In that format I can sort by name and it puts the pics in chronical order and since the date modified can change when a file is copied, I always have the date and time right there.

I used to name my files in this fashion in the good old DOS days but without
the dashes and only yy which left me with space for only 2 characters, say
hr for ‘house renovation’. Thus a file name would be something like hr910731.txt which would automatically show all documents for house renovation together and in the right order. The alternative method was to
use ymmdd which left room for a third character at the end of the filename
where there could be more than one document per day on any given subject.
This would serve me fine until the next decade and if the third character
preferably after the dd would allow for up to 9 documents per subject per
day which made the system good for the duration of the decade.

And, as you obviously know, you can search for files with ? in the search pattern and so if the HR was in the … say 11th thru 12th position, you would search ??????????HR*.txt to get all files with the HR there. I just checked this out to be sure and learned something interesting: If there are spaces in the file name, apparently, you have to put quotation marks around the expression or the search thing in XP will treat each side of the search … each side of the spaces as seperate file names … but it does work if you use quotations.

I used this system till very recently notwithstanding the march of time and
Windows XP and long filenames etc and might even go back to it though I must say I have got such a comprehensive folder system that I hardly need it
any longer.
—
choro-nik
*******

I bet you have the files organized by folders with years and subfolders of months. I wonder if many programs would open shortcuts say if you searched for all of the files related to a certain subject and then made shortcuts and put them in a folder so that you would have a folder of a subject but not use up all of the space the actual files would take up.

The possibilities are endless, as the saying goes! But one has got to be systematic. Personally I like the hyphen as a visual aid at least between the year and month day i.e. 2006-0731 would stand for year 2006 July 31st. If you wanted to insert the time as well it would then be 2006-0731_2359_ etc. I prefer to use the _ underscore to separate the different values such as date_time_rest-of-filename.ext

Also I believe that Apple software does not like spaces or CAPS in filenames. Don’t know if this still holds true but it is something to keep in mind should you ever want to go over to the enemy side!!!
Actually I might soon desert and go AWOL…. and take a trip to the SUSE Linux side across no man’s land! Hope I don’t get blown up crossing the minefields!
—
choro-nik
*******

If I go back to Apple, and I wish I could afford it, I’ll replace the spaces. : -) It occurs to me that I should leave an extra space or two in the numerical field because I’m getting close to 40K # of pictures. I got some dupes but I’m not sure how many and if it’s worth it to delete them. I’m going to leave the fields that might change towards the end so they will not interfere with searching as much, if they do change.