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SAM2009Flag for Canada

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Best tool to rename photos by date name in Mac and PC

What is the best tool to rename photos by date name in Mac and PC? I'm tired to get a name like IMG_2133.jpg which does not tell anything.
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Montoya

try IrFanView.. free, do batch renames.. works well.
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Since several Windows examples have been given, I'll give a Mac suggestion.

If you use iPhoto or Photos on a Mac, they're already sorted into Date and time folders when you import them.  The do end up in the ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library.photolibrary or ~/Pictures/Photos Library.photoslibrary

On the Mac, you can also bulk rename through the command line with scripts, but you need to understand how to use the command line.
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Sorry when I said date I mean change the name to something like: 2017-01-11 22.25.20.jpg

So transform to date and time.

Thanks
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> Sorry when I said date I mean change the name to something like: 2017-01-11 22.25.20.jpg

There are three likely fields for you, as shown in the ExifTool table:

Tag ID     Tag Name
------     --------
0x0132     ModifyDate (called DateTime by the EXIF spec)
0x9003     DateTimeOriginal (date/time when original image was taken)
0x9004     CreateDate (called DateTimeDigitized by the EXIF spec)

Open in new window

Pick the Tag that you want and then use the ExifTool in either Windows or OS X to do the file rename. For example, I just ran this in a command prompt in W7:

exiftool.exe -d %Y-%m-%d_%H.%M.%S.jpg IMG_2133.jpg "-filename<CreateDate"

Open in new window

It changed the file name from IMG_2133.jpg to:

2014-10-19_12.07.40.jpg

Regards, Joe
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Thanks for your suggestions!
You're welcome. In case you missed it, the solution in this post does exactly what you want in both Windows and OS X:
#a41957221
Good luck on the project! Regards, Joe
This question piqued my interest and I decided to write a program for it.

The utility that I recommended above (ExifTool) is a very powerful command line tool, but I'm thinking that it would be nice to have a GUI program for the less technically inclined users. I also like the idea of a program specifically for renaming photos, rather than another general purpose program, of which there are already many good ones, such as Bulk Rename Utility, Flash Renamer, IrfanView, etc.

I'm calling the program RAPID (Rename All Photos with Internal Date). Here are my design thoughts on it — would love to get feedback from the folks on this thread:

(1) Option to select just individual files via a Browse-for-File dialog that supports the standard Windows selection keys (Ctrl-click, Shift-click, etc.). This is the default.

(2) Option to select an entire source folder via a Browse-for-Folder dialog.

(3) Option to select an entire source folder and all of its subfolders (i.e., recurse into subfolders), also via a Browse-for-Folder dialog.

(4) While the ExifTool can work on a huge number of file formats, I'm thinking of restricting the GUI to just the popular photo formats of digital cameras — JPEG and RAW. But I also think it's valuable to have an "All Files" option, although that will get files like DOCX, PDF, PSD, etc., which many users may not want to be renamed (hence, the JPEG and RAW choices). With that in mind, I suggest an option to specify the file formats to process: JPEG Only (jpeg, jpg, jpe); RAW Only (crw, cr2, nef, orf, pef); both JPEG and RAW; or All Files. JPEG Only is the default.

(5) Option to specify which date/time tag to use for the rename. Choices are CreateDate (default), ModifyDate, DateTimeOriginal.

(6) Create a logfile with information about the run. Offer options for Summary Only or Summary and Details. The summary includes info such as elapsed time for the run, number of files processed, etc. The details include info on each file processed, something along these lines (from an actual run of the beta, btw):

Return Code=0 from ExifTool renaming D:\RAPID in\IMG_0019.CR2
Return Code=0 from ExifTool renaming D:\RAPID in\CIMG3265.JPG
Return Code=1 from ExifTool renaming D:\RAPID in\test.txt

The RAPID beta has this opening screen:

User generated image
All ideas are welcome! Thanks, Joe
Hello Joe always good to see you and the wonderful contributions you do for others.
This a good idea, the idea I'd like to propose to you is also adding resizing. I find many photographers that have asked about this over years got stuck with the problem of 1000's of images to resize and rename.
Ran into problems proofing them.
I have posted my personal choice as IfranView, this tool can do so much and uses the ## to change the name convention, a bit like how we change the date and time to show day date month year.
If I may show you what I mean take a look at these 2 guides with Ifranview. The idea of the ## to set the name and date sounds pretty good if you can work that into your program.
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/forums/t/43854/batch-renaming-using-irfanview/
https://diaryofdennis.com/2012/07/11/tutorial-converting-batch-rename-and-batch-resize-your-photos-with-irfanview/
All the best
Merete
One of the options should be the ISO format which is sortable like 2017-0118-mypic.jpg.  Not everyone would want this but it would 'automatically' sort the files by that date.  Time could be added like 2017-0118-1223-mypic.jpg so that a folder with a lot of pics from the same date would still be sorted by time.
Hi joe,

I have one comment to add:

As available in IrfanView, add the possibility to do a "Run test rename" just to be able to see the results before a final commit.

Also, Merete's suggestion for resize has merit, but you may feel that it is outside the scope of your project.

Good lck,

Paul
Hi Merete,
Thanks for the feedback — and the kind words! Your resizing idea is interesting, but I want to be careful not to load it up with too many features. IrfanView is an incredibly robust program, but that also makes it somewhat difficult to use. I want to make sure that my program is really easy to use. For example, I want to avoid the complexity of IrfanView's "Name pattern" (##'s) in its batch conversion dialog. If a user is capable of understanding that, he/she may as well use IrfanView. :)

I didn't document it above, but the beta also puts a suffix on the renamed file — the original file name preceded by an underscore. For example:

CIMG3265.JPG

would actually be renamed to:

2014-09-18_13.12.42_CIMG3265.JPG

I like knowing what the original file name was and this is also a way to avoid duplicate file names.

Thanks again for your comments. Regards, Joe
Hi Dave,
I'm putting the date at the beginning of the file name in a sortable format. I chose YYYY-MM-DD, but could easily make it YYYY-MMDD, although I think the ISO standard is the former.

I'm including the time as hh.mm.ss, but could easily make it hhmm, although I like including the seconds and the field separators (periods). So a folder with a lot of photos with the same date will still be sorted by time.

I've already added your suggestion of -mypic, if by mypic you mean the original file name (but I chose a separator of underscore instead of hyphen — that could be an option).

Thanks for your ideas! Regards, Joe
Any of those formats will work fine.
Hi Paul,
"Run test rename" is an interesting idea. ExifTool has direct support for that via its TestName tag. For example, it displays output like this without actually changing anything:

'CIMG3265.JPG' --> '2014-09-18_13.12.42_CIMG3265.JPG'
'IMG_2133.CR2' --> '2016-10-19_12.07.40_IMG_2133.CR2'

I'll give some thought to implementing that. Thanks for the idea. Regards, Joe
> Any of those formats will work fine.

Glad to hear it, Dave. Thanks for the ideas!
Hi Folks,
Revised UI based on the comments here and in PMs:

User generated image
Trying to add functionality but retain ease-of-use. Feedback welcome! Thanks again, Joe
good stuff

perhaps add the name of the folder for the log file (selected rename folder or other folder)
> perhaps add the name of the folder for the log file (selected rename folder or other folder)

Good thought, but rather than another Browse dialog to specify the folder for the logfiles, how about a simple choice of either the source folder or an AppData folder (for the latter, it would be %AppData%\RAPID\Logfiles\).

Raises another idea — how about storing the settings in a configuration file (RAPID.ini) in AppData so that a subsequent run uses the most recently selected choices instead of the defaults. Of course, the user can always change the parameters in any given run, but the radio button choices will always be set to what was used last time (I suspect that once a user chooses the params, many of them will stay the same from run to run).
i was thinking always in the same place like a .rapid folder or the selected folder rather than giving a choice, but just indicate where the log file is
Oh, I misunderstood...thought you wanted to be able to specify its location. It already shows where it is and also offers a hotkey (F10) to open it. Here's what the closing dialog looks like:

User generated image
Do you think that's sufficient?
yes, that's exactly what i meant
Great!
Decided to go horizontal with the radio buttons for the three separators in order to reduce vertical space required. Revised UI:

User generated image
Any objections? Regards, Joe
most screens now are much wider and not as high, so you could probably place most of your radio buttons horizontally
Good thought, Paul. How do you feel about drop-down lists rather than radio buttons? Something like this:

User generated image
Of course, without hitting the drop-down arrow, you don't know what the choices are (which are immediately visible with radio buttons):

User generated image
i'm used to this approach - anyone familiar with MS Word/MS Office will be as well
Thanks for the feedback, Paul. I went to drop-downs for the separators:

User generated image
Now I'm thinking about whether or not to switch to drop-downs for the other params. Regards, Joe
it's certainly a much more streamlined look...

let's see what the others think!