Digital camera file renaming help

April 18, 2008 8:39 PM

Is there simple software for a digital camera flash card that will offload my pics -and- change the filename to the date they were taken?

I have a Pentax point & shoot digital camera, and offload my pics by putting the flash card in a reader and copying the contents. The camera names its output files imgp0410.jpg, imgp0411.jpg, etc. This isn't very good for long term archival. I've always preferred something based on the filename YYMMDDxxxx.jpg (YY, MM, DD being the numerical year), which makes sorting and organizing much easier for me, especially years later. The pictures do contain EXIF data and file stamps that contain the date, so this theoretically should not be a big deal.

Are there any freeware or shareware programs anyone's whipped up to handle this?

posted by mr. creosote to computers & internet (5 comments total)

Check out the comments of this Lifehacker post about renaming digital photos in bulk. There are lots of recommendations for utilities, and one helpful person posted his photo-renaming Perl script.
posted by stefanie at 9:06 PM on April 18, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Picasa from google is free and does this, you just need to batch rename them after copying them to your computer
posted by kaydo at 9:17 PM on April 18, 2008

I followed stefanie's link and found Exifer.. this did the trick!
posted by mr. creosote at 9:30 PM on April 18, 2008

Try NameEXIF, very simple (possibly too simple)
posted by xla76 at 2:19 AM on April 19, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Seconding NameExif. I use this right after shooting pics and before post processing. Works like a charm.
posted by neuroking at 4:22 AM on April 19, 2008