Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Hi,

I took a bunch of photos at a friend's wedding yesterday, using 3 cameras - well, 2, but one of them "wrapped around" and went back to numbering at 0000 part way through. I could probably do this manually, but with over 400 shots it would take forever... I want to sort them by the time taken, and bulk rename them in the proper sequence. I saw in a timelapse tutorial that you can do this in Bridge, but I don't currently have that on here.

Is there a (fairly) straight-forward way to do this in LR?

Thanks in advance!

Searcher Loc: Kent, England

Go to the Library mode and select the images for renaming, in the menu Library > Rename
Click on the down arrow and choose the rename method you want. If none are correct for you, select the Edit (from that drop down list and then configure the name as you want from the dialogue.

Do this on two only of the images to check how it comes out, then select all for rename and do the lot in one go.

DavidPine Loc: Fredericksburg, TX

Again, the power of Lightroom.

:thumbup: :thumbup:

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

Thanks, I will try that.

jcboy3

You need to be in the Library module. Put all the photos you want to rename into a Collection, and select that Collection. Select grid view (at the bottom of the image frame), and a sort order drop down menu will be available to the right at the bottom of the image frame. Ensure that Capture Time is the sort order.

Then in the Library Menu select Rename. In the Rename dialog, you can select how to name the photos (I usually do a custom name with sequence number).

This will rename the photos on disk as well as in Lightroom.

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

It sounds like you're trying to put the cart in front of the horse or in this case to redesign the workflow of LR. Sounds like you're going to rename the files on import then PP then export and rename again.

There are basically 3 steps to proper LR workflow:
1. Import, keyword and catalog original files. (normally sorted by year\year-month-day\file name) File-names are irrelevant at this stage.
2. Find your keepers, "P"ick them and do PP on the keepers.
3. Export your finished keepers to a location of choice and with a file-name scenario that suits you. This also allows your photos to be numbered sequentially with no gaps giving the impression that every shot you took was a keeper.

With the above sorting method in #1, in addition to normal back ups for original files you can also back up to DVD or whatever by year every January when it's too damn cold to be out shooting.

BobHartung Loc: Bettendorf, IA

In a word, YES! In Library mode there is a selector along the bottom of the screen when looking at thumbnail views that allows you to sort by name, acquisiton time etc.

By the by, what camera are your using. I ran into this "problem" when by D800E turned over from 9999->0001. However, Nikon allow users an 8 place image identifier xxxxyyyy, where the last four digits are auto incremented. The first four can be assigned, so I just changed xxxx to 0001 and manually changed the file names(read numbers) if the 4-5 images that had been duplicated. Thus 0001 of the turn over group became 10001. This is important for me as I have things set to avoid importing duplicates.

Further, I have changed xxxx to Axxx, Bxxx, and Cxxx on the three Nikon cameras I have to there will be no duplicated numbers (D800 IR mod is Axxxyyyy, D800E is Bxxxyyyy, and D4 is Cxxxyyyy).

HTH

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

No, I only wanted to sort and rename them once. I used 2 cameras, and one of them I also used for video of the actual ceremony. When I went back to stills, it reset to 0000. So, I effectively had 3 different strings of sequence numbers, and I wanted to get them in one nice, tidy string.

Following what had been suggested above, I did this, only to find out that I had not set my SX50 to summer time, so that was an hour out of sequence... *sigh*

Still, that was only used for the stills of the ceremony, so I can just separate them out into a different group. The merge was successful for the 2 strings of files taken with other camera.

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

I was using a Canon T4i and SX50. The T4i was used for stills of all the preparation, and the reception and stuff. For the ceremony, I used that, along with a video camcorder to get 2 angles of video, and I used the SX50 for stills during that time.

I don't know if it was anything to do with shooting video in between, or if it just happened to be at that point, but the stills which followed the ceremony were put into a different folder, and started from 0000 again. Actually, I guess that means that the camera has now taken 1000 photos!

I have had this same problem before, trying to get photos into some semblance of real-time order, when taken from several cameras, and it can be a real pain.

This time it worked well, except I hadn't changed the SX50 to daylight-savings time, so all those stills are an hour out of sequence - the bride is walking down the aisle 2 photos before she poses beforehand with the bridesmaids... Relatively easy to straighten that out, though. I will just have a different group for the ceremony, and the rest will be a nice sequence throughout the day.

As far as how the cameras handle it, I had the SX50 first, and I liked the way it does it - a new folder named for the date, and that day's shots all go in there. I have a large SD card in there, and I will often leave photos on there until I start to reach the limit. The T4i, however, just keeps adding into the same folder - until apparently it wraps round to the next thousand! That makes it more inconvenient to leave stuff on there, when it comes time to upload newer sessions.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Yes, but it is best to rename on import. You can use a name like Joe and Mary wedding [file number] and start at 0001. When you have imported the images from one camera, you increment the next number and using the same name, import the next batch.

Bloke Loc: Waynesboro, Pennsylvania

No, that would give me the same as I started with - separate lists sorted by camera first... I needed to get the whole selection sorted into a single sequence.

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

Going back to my original reply,
1. Import into LR with no name changes.
2. Post Process:
2a. Grab the ones with 1 hour offset and adjust the time on those.
2b. Now highlight all the photos for the day and sort by time taken.
3.Then export with sequential numbers.

The entire process on a slow computer might take 5 minutes. (import time excluded)

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I am going to be honest and say I don't understand your goal here. The Lightroom Library module, in grid view - offers a series of sort options. So regardless of whether you rename the images or not, you can certainly view them in the order in which you would like to view them. You can also add all the images for this event to a collection (not a smart collection which does not offer custom sort order), and end up at the same place. Lastly, as you rename your files you can add the date, hour, minute and second of the capture to each filename, so that even if you are not viewing the images in LR, you can see when the image was taken. If you are in Windows, you can use Windows explorer to sort the file list by time created as well. Do any of these approaches fit for you?

Searcher Loc: Kent, England

A quite easy way of handling all this is to put all the photos into a collection, drag the thumbnails to the sequence positions required then select them all (Control + A)

Menu > Library > Rename Photos
Choose Edit from the drop down list
On the dialogue choose Custom and enter the on the white panel "Marys wedding"
Click insert against the Sequence #(1)
Click Done

In the panel now is an opportunity to change the start number of the sequence
Press OK

the images will all be renamed )and in the sequence you moved them to in the collection.

Marys Wedding 1
Marys Wedding 2
etc.

If a subsequent sort by date is required use the filter sort system. (the date is still embedded in the metadata)

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Exactly!