Batch File Renaming Software
Category: Apple/Mac OS... Photography... Tech...
Posted Wednesday, July 05, 2006 at 02:57 PM [GMT-6]

Digital photography has opened up a whole world of creativity for many of us, but the downside is that we're faced with the daunting task of managing all of those files we create with our cameras. It doesn't help that most cameras give us few alternatives to meaningful files names like MVC100012 or JAME-1600. So we inevitably end up with a series of directories containing files with cryptic and often redundant names. Renaming them manually is a royal pain, so much so that we just elect to skip that step and hope that the keywords in our photo management software will help us find what we're seeking.

Renaming of files is also one of the biggest inefficiencies in my daily workflow. I have a number of clients who send scores and even hundreds of photos and I need to get them organized as quickly as possible. Again, manual renaming is time-consuming busy work that keeps me from doing more important -- and better paying -- tasks.

I finally found a solution for this problem, in the form of the awkwardly-named A Better Finder Rename, a shareware program for Mac (the Windows version is called Better File Rename) that does only one thing -- rename one or more files -- and does it extremely well.

I won't repeat the long list of ways this software can make your file renaming chores easier; they're clearly spelled out on the website. What I will tell you is that I recouped the $19.95 shareware fee many times over in the first couple of days after installing it. Even if you don't do file management as a part of your job, you'll be amazed at how it can help you get your digital photos organized.

I recommend it, and for you bleeding-edge Mac users, it's already in Universal Binary format so you can use it on your Intel machines.

Technorati tags: A Better Finder Rename | File Renaming Software