Naming Files

[stever]

with regard to the original question

now that i'v got myself sorted going forward, my head starts to hurt big-time thinking about how to sort my past mess and what if any part of it i should bring into Lightroom

[Nill Toulme]

Steve as I recall there's an option to use the EXIF timestamp rather than the file timestamp for naming purposes.  See if that helps.

Nill
~~
www.toulme.net

[b2photoworks]

the naming convention that we use here is:



             Date      Location, person or event
Folder = 070601- Mono Lake, CA (2007 June 1st)
             091021- Bodie, CA        (2009 October 21st)



         Locatiion, person or event = Date
File = Mono Lake, CA - 070601-0001
         Jill James - 081623-0002
         Hilltop Pie Eating Contest - 061231-0003

[Woodcorner]

My naming scheme is closely related to suggsestions made by Peter Krogh's invaluable book on Digital Asset Management, The DAM Book.

<abbreviation of my name>_<YYYYMMDD from EXIF data><camera>_<camera sequence#>.<ext>

so a file could be named

xx_200709121ds2_1234.cr2

I use Image Ingester or LR to do the renaming after or at import.

Cheers,

Andrew

[Marsupilami]

Be careful with long filenames when you plan to print your files at a lab and give these prints to customers, a lot of the lab machines do print the filename on the back of the print which can be very handy, but some of them only print 8 digits long !
So I find an ongoing numbering of my files (from 000001 to whatever) plus a front captial for the camera in use like 5D for my Canon 5d and D for my 20d and M for my 1 DMark II,...  that is very simple but does the job for me.  Date and time are also in my exif data if I need them.