Photo organizing software that renames as I drag photos into order?

September 4, 2008 11:03 PM

I am in the process of scanning about 1,500 photos from my life (thank you Epson auto feeder) and am now tasked with organizing them into a useful digital library. The order is almost completely random, and while I can organize them by subject into folders, what I really need is a program that will let me drag and drop thumbnails into the order that I want them and then rename the files so that they remain in that order. Does anyone know of such a software program or have any other suggestions for doing this? And I'm on a Mac (Leopard), but have Parallels if need be. Thanks! Seth
posted by SethLeonard to Computers & Internet (14 answers total)

ThumbsPlus (for Windows) can do that.

What you do is create thumbnails for all the pictures, and then put them into a "gallery". While you're in the gallery, you can drag them around and rearrange the order.

Then you use the "auto-rename" function from the "file" pull-down to renumber them.
posted by Class Goat at 11:11 PM on September 4, 2008

Lightroom.
posted by armoured-ant at 1:59 AM on September 5, 2008

Some years ago, I had great success with using various IView software to organise and rename a lot of images. They had some quite nifty renaming and tagging tools. I see they're been taken over by Microsoft, but the software is still available on the Mac, so it may be worth a look.
posted by outlier at 4:55 AM on September 5, 2008

Um flickr membership? (If flickr is mac friendly?) It's not software as such (there is an uploader you can install) but it does have the advantage of if you at any point wanted to show somebody you could just email them a guestpass. (It's so cute, I love that!)
posted by mu~ha~ha~ha~har at 4:59 AM on September 5, 2008

If you have any sort of ongoing commitment to photography, especially digital photography, lightroom is great. It has great organizing tools as well has very high quality digital development tools. I am sure you can find some free solutions and lightroom is not cheep. But it is the best solution. This is a very easy to use, intuitive, well designed program designed to do exactly what you want.
posted by shothotbot at 5:14 AM on September 5, 2008

Camera bits Photo Mechanic was made precisely to do this. Free trial for 30 days.
posted by thenormshow at 5:43 AM on September 5, 2008

I second Lightroom if you are looking to pay for a product. It's worth the money, and is very capable
posted by MrC at 6:32 AM on September 5, 2008

I feel obliged to add Aperture to the list of recommended software. It is comparable to Lightroom in terms of features. Again, it is a rather advanced tool and might be an overkill but you should consider it if you are into digital photography.

In terms of Aperture vs. Lightroom, it's a pretty old debate. I started with Aperture because it was cheaper at the campus bookstore (hint). I'm sure Lightroom has many great features too. Both have trials so use the one that seems more intuitive to you.

But as I said, both of these tools might be an overkill for the task at hand.
posted by the_dude at 7:43 AM on September 5, 2008

But as I said, both of these tools might be an overkill for the task at hand.
posted by the_dude at 10:43 AM on September 5 [+] [!]

Agreed, and I meant to make that point above: if this is a one time thing hack through with some free tool. If you will continue to take photographs, in the long run you will be better off with a good tool like Aperture or Lightroom.
posted by shothotbot at 8:27 AM on September 5, 2008

Wait, what is Lightroom or Aperture going to do for him that iPhoto couldn't do?
posted by low affect at 8:47 AM on September 5, 2008

Response by poster: Thanks for all the ideas. I'm sure Lightroom and Aperture are great, but I'm pretty much looking for a solution for this one project; I'm all set on all my other digital photography needs. I've found a couple ways to do it in Windows (including apparently doing it using Explorer), but am now look for a Mac solution. iView and Photo Mechanic might work, but I'm going to wait until I'm done scanning to start the free trials. Any other Mac suggestions?
posted by SethLeonard at 9:25 AM on September 5, 2008

try irfanview. Its free (non commercial use) and it has a funky batch rename facility as well as a decent thumbnail view.

A bit clunky (so many options) but very very fast. Something i have found is missing from Adobe products.
posted by Vroom_Vroom_Vroom at 1:50 PM on September 5, 2008

Best answer: You can just use iPhoto that came with your Mac.

Make a new folder and be sure to turn sorting to manual. Then when you are done select the first and then shift-click on the last. This should select them in the order you have made. At that point use the batch-convert feature in the Photos-menu (or press cmd-shift-b, does the same) to call them something with an added number. After that I would probably do some kind of date change too using the same method.

No reason to spend money on a simple thing like that ;-)
posted by KimG at 5:24 PM on September 5, 2008

Response by poster: Thank you KimG, that does it! I ultimately want the filenames organized, but that's handled via exporting them from iPhoto and using the sequential option.
posted by SethLeonard at 9:43 PM on September 7, 2008