How do you name pictures in groups when you connect a digital camera? Urgent help needed!

I'm trying to help a friend copy his images from his Canon digital camera (SD700). In Windows, you can connect the camera and set the name of the group of pictures/movies as e.g. "Birthday Pictures" and it will save the pictures/movies automatically as Birthday Pictures 001, Birthday Pictures 002 etc etc. How do you do that in OS X?
Thanks guys.

 

You can do that in iPhoto.
Change the ID of then event, which is usually the date, then select the pictures, ctrl+click>Batch Change...>Set "Title" to "Event NAme".

 

Thanks for the reply! But will it save movies as well?

 

Hum... honestly I have no idea... sorry

 

Yes, it will.

I mean, I'm no expert or anything, but iPhoto picked up the videos from my Casio Exilim and put them under the appropriate date/events.

 

Thanks for the replies. I tried the batch change and it didn't change the file names at all. Any explanation? When I drag the file to the desktop, for example, it still has the original file name from the camera...


It changes the title of the file, but not the actual FILE name. Is there a way to change the file name?

 

weird...
But you can change the file names in the Photoshop Bridge too...
This should change it for good...
You need to copy the pictures from iPhoto to a folder somewhere else because you can't select the iPhoto folder in Photoshop.
Then you select the pictures you want>Tools>Batch rename>Then you call them however you want.

 

If iPhoto isn't doing it for you, you can try using A Better Finder Rename. http://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/
If you know where your photos are stored, you can use that tool to easily rename everything.

 

Thanks again for the help. I was hoping there was a one-step thing in OS X like there is in Windows. This is for someone who's really computer illiterate, you see....

Thanks, though!

 

File change? I don't really understand...like from "IMG_1000.jpg" to "Fireworks.jpg"?

If so, use Automator!

 

Again, this is TWO applications for what SHOULD be one, non?

 

When I first switched I was hung-up on trying to re-create my old Windows workflow in Mac OS X.

I used to batch rename my files in explorer and then take it from there, and wanted to do something equivalent in Mac OS X.

The only method I found was, as Sam suggests, in Automator, but I found it quite cumbersome.

Now that I use Aperture I simply rename on import (and/or export), but if I didn't use it, I don't know what I would do.

 

Automator does it really easy, really. I've always used Automator to rename my pictures.

If you mean how to rename an "album" in iPhoto, click the Info button along the bottom, and it'll bring up a set of information. Just edit "Roll 29" or whatever it is .

 

No, no I mean in one fell swoop I want to be able to import movies/pictures, and have the file names Birthday 1, Birthday 2, Birthday 3 etc. That's all.

No biggie. Guess you can't do it on a Mac. Think I'll switch back to Windows...

 

My gripe was that in Windows you simply 'select all' in explorer, highlight the name text in the first one, and type the name you want, then all the other change.

In Mac OS X, you have to open automator, tell it which script you want... that combined with the fact I was ( and still am ) totally new to automator was frustrating.

Sure, it is probably easy when you know how, but I do feel this is one area of MAC OS that doesn't 'just work'

 

Yeah, that's what Automator does. You can sequence it, so its like "Aquarium-1", "Aquarium-2", etc.

 

Yes yes, but I want to do it in one program!

 

http://mac.softpedia.com/get/Utilities/Bulk-Rename.shtml

What Bulk Rename is doing is calling underlying OSX programs to do the renaming. This is what automator would do as well. So something like ...
for $f in DSCN*.jpg; do
$g = `basename $f,jpg`
mv $f yellowstone$g.jpg
done
gets a nice gui wrapper around it. But the underlying programs are unix programs that only do one thing and do it well. On OSX, you get the simplicity and reliability of unix programs combined with wrappers that make it all appear as if somebody went and wrote an elaborate shell script just for you.

 

Nice info r0k, I have to try that next time.

 

I just tried it William, I was able to do exactly what you want in iPhoto. The difference is it's not done while importing it's done after the fact. Just highlight the Event, click Photos in the menu bar, choose Batch Change, then "Set Title to Text" then type in your text then check mark "Append a number to each photo". The info screen at the bottom left will show the results.

It's very easy however you can't drag and drop the photo to the desktop and have the title remain.
Now, if your gonna switch then switch but the OS X system isn't Windows. Try going to back to using a PC and you will find it harder to use after using a Mac.

 

Thanks for that reply. Unfortunately this method does not change the file name. It changes the title of the photo within iPhoto, but the file name in Finder remains the same.

Thanks, though, for the effort. It seems there's no way to change the raw file name in one step in OS X. I can't believe Windows handles photos this way better!

 

Ummm...As I had mentioned previously, why not try A Better Finder Rename? I use it very frequently to rename multiple files. Sure, you have to launch an extra application, but it is very easy to use.

 

Thanks for the replies. Really. I was just trying to see if it's possible to do this all in one program, which it apparently is not. I know you can use automator and A Better Finder Rename.

Thanks for all the assistance. Back to Windows I go!

*sells MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Apple BT keyboard, iPhone, Time Capsule and Airport Express*

Kidding, of course.