file naming conventions

hi all,

i just installed aperture 3, and am getting ready to import my pictures. i wanted to ask what you guys and gals use for filenames? do you rename, or just use the camera default, or if you rename; what format do you use?

thanks for your input!

I leave them as the camera names them. I sort by folder so duplicate names is not a problem. (the camera starts over after 9999.) I will name the folder to the event. 1 event to 1 folder.

I rename every image. Irrespective of body I have a sequential number, followed by a text of the month/year or the shoot title and then followed by the cameras original file name. It would look something like 108487_Dec09_D3s2498.c​r2. I copy from my card to a folder on my hard drive and then use Breezebrowser Pro which has a terrific renaming function and always remembers the last sequential number used so it can pick up where it last left off. I do store on my hard drive by year and month but in reality it is not that important as if I need to find an image I will refer to my catalog which will pickup by date, keyword, etc. It is very easy for me to find a shot, irrespective of its folder location. I don't use Aperture so can't comment on that application.

yy-month-###

special events like vacation get yy-eventname-###

Everything is date-named. I use a leading "P" (for picture) partly so the filename isn't all-numeric and mostly for historical reasons. Then the date and time come in yyyy.mm.dd-hh.mm.ss format so that pictures will sort in date order. Then a 4-digit image number that's directly from the camera sequence. Finally, "-bw", "-hdr", "-stitched", "-processed", "-forweb", "-cropped", "-forweb", etc. for stuff that I've postprocessed. So in the end I'll have something like P2010.08.23-14.32.20-4392.cr2 which gets processed to P2010.08.23-14.32.20-4392-bw.jpg.

The original purpose of date-naming was to let me look things up by date (I often have a good idea of when the shot I want was taken). The other advantage is that it guarantees me unique names for every file; none of this garbage of having "IMG_0001.JPG" reappear every 10K clicks.

I always rename. I use Downloader Pro to move my files from my card reader to my hard drive and I have it configured to rename all my files. I use the XXX_YYYYMMDD_#### format where:

XXX are my initials
YYYYMMDD is the date the file was created in standard ISO format (this is read directly from the file metadata)
#### is a four-digit sequence number generated by Downloader Pro.

Even when I use 3 cameras to shoot events I'll never shoot more than 9,999 frame in any given day so all my files have unique names that cannot be duplicated.

You're going to get varying suggestions so I'd strongly suggest you get a copy of Peter Krogh's "The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers" and study it. Alternatively you can also visit his website and see what he suggests: http://thedambook.com/​smf/index.php

The renaming format I use is the one recommended by Krogh. Job codes etc. are added to the IPTC metadata rather than to the folder name.

I like YYYYMMDD_Job_#### and use Downloader Pro to do this as well as organize photos in folders by YYYY/MM_Month/DD_Job.

DLP also does the CR2 to DNG conversion but as I save both files they have the same name and I can always get back to the CR2.

DLP also writes the camera filename to IPTC fields for the VERY rare times I shoot in RAW and JPEG for someone that needs the JPEG right away.