I’ve struggled with managing thousands of digital photos like everyone else. And no, I’m not a professional photographer but I like taking many photos to get that one I will like. When I first got my digital camera a few years ago I was happy that I could take as many pictures I wanted without worrying about paying for developing them. What I didn’t expect was the ‘cost’ of storing/organizing the many digital photos. I’ve tried different methods to organize them and I basically came to the conclusion that you need to keep the digital photo in a filename that matches the data/time it was taken. Unfortunately digital cameras themselves so far seem to lack that feature, which means the files need to be renamed after they have been downloaded to the Mac. And you obviously need a software to automatically rename the files.
And that software would be, ExifRenamer. It’s a Mac software that’s free and really good at what it does.
And that software would be, ExifRenamer. It’s a Mac software that’s free and really good at what it does.
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When you drag a directory of photos onto the ExifRenamer, it will rename them all in this format: YYYY-MM-DD_hh-mm-ss.jpg. You can change the format if you like. You need to make sure the digital camera was set to correct local time though for this solution to work.
Here’s where you can download the free software.
It can also rename video clips. ExifRenamer correctly renames video clips taken with my small digital camera, Canon SD790 IS.
Don’t download digital photos onto your mac without ExifRenamer.
Also, you want to make sure to change the data/time if you are traveling to another time zone. Let’s say your family lives on the West Coast of USA and traveled to Hawaii for a family vacation. During the trip you take photos of your child still sleeping in bed at 7AM. However the time stamp on the photos will show 10AM, if you didn’t change the time on the digital camera. When you see the photos years later, you’d think that kid was pretty lazy. But of course the fact is that the photos were taken at 7AM local time, not 10AM.
Some people don’t pay much attention to the time stamp setting in their digital camera. However if you enjoy taking tons of digital photos but don’t enjoy wasting time trying to organize them, you should set correct time stamp on the digital camera. Having correct time stamp is the very basic foundation to managing photos easily.
Also, you want to make sure to change the data/time if you are traveling to a different time zone. Let’s say your family lives on the West Coast of USA and traveled to Hawaii for a family vacation. During the trip you take photos of your child still sleeping in bed at 7AM. However the time stamp on the photos will show 10AM, if you didn’t change the time on the digital camera. When you see the photos years later, you’d think that kid was pretty lazy. But of course the fact is that the photos were taken at 7AM local time, not 10AM.