PHOTO NAMING – SYNTAX
What to name
your photo files, and
How to find
them using the search feature
By Yale
Schwartz
|
This
article provides a file naming convention for those of us who collect digital
photos. This convention makes it easy
to locate photos even years later.
The simple objective of this article is to show you what your
filenames should look like. In
subsequent articles, I’ll provide tips to help you: - Rename files that you've already
scanned or dumped from your digital camera - Add simple or detailed captions But
all that fancy renaming and caption stuff comes later. Right
now, let’s start by looking at a sample photo and its filename. === EXAMPLE #1: a simple photo
=== file naming syntax The
filename is composed of the following fields. date; location; occasion #sequence number; names;
caption.extension date :
in the format yyyy.mmdd.hhmm [month, day and time are optional] location : abbreviated city name or street address occasion : birthday, wedding, graduation, picnic, visit, home, none #seq :
sequence number to ensure the name is unique [optional] names :
names of people, places, or things caption : word or phrase to help you distinguish this photo from
others ext :
file format extension, e.g. jpg, bmp, gif, tiff === file naming conventions REQUIRED Always
separate syntax fields with a semicolon Always
separate names with commas, moving left to right, and front row to back === file naming conventions OPTIONAL To
be most compatible across operating systems: - use all lower case letters - use an underscore instead of the
space character === Tips to reduce the size of the file name Abbreviate
location, e.g. hazl stands for Hazleton === EXAMPLE #2: different ways to handle many names in a
photo
=== A few things to note about the filename Date
= 2005.0104 shows the year, month and day which stands for January 4, 2005. Location
= tama is an abbreviation I’ll use consistently for Tamaqua Occasion
#seq = The occasion was a funeral and the digital caption applied when the
photos were dumped from the camera would have been “2005.0104; tama; funeral”
to which the camera applied the sequence number #025 as a suffix. === Same names There
are two people named Lucy in my circle of friends; so they’re distinguished
as lucyr and lucyo. === Dealing with a large list of names There
are a few things to consider when a photo contains many people. - You may want to name everyone (see
below, Use an xref text file) - You may only want to name one or
two people in a crowd (see below, Captions) - Or you may be satisfied to group by
family names (see below, Grouping by family) === Grouping by family Grouping
by family names is one way to shorten the names portion of the file. In this example I know everyone and I
don’t feel I have to pinpoint each person name by name, so I’m content to use
this group naming technique. I do
this by adding a plus sign to the mother’s name, (maureen+). I’ll use this technique even if the mother
is not in the photo. And I’ll also
use it even if not all of the children are in the picture. Maureen,
however, would probably want to list all the names for her copy of this
photo. To do so, she could use the
xref text file technique. === Use an xref text file If
you want to name everyone in the photo and there are more than five or six
names, you may want to use the xref text file method. This is a good choice especially if the
people in the photo are arranged in an orderly fashion, i.e. left to right,
front row to back row. To
use the xref text file method, you’ll create a text file with the same name
as the photo file except, of course, the extension for the text file will be
“txt”. For
Example #2 these two files names would be: 2005.0104;
tama; funeral #025; xref; leiby's after lucyr funeral.jpg (for the jpg file) 2005.0104;
tama; funeral #025; xref; leiby's after lucyr funeral.txt (for the text file) The
contents of the xref text file for Example #2 would be as follows:
=== EXAMPLE #3: Captions (simple overview)
When
there are many people in the photo that you want to identify, you’ll find the
Caption method useful. This method
applies equally well if you only want to name some of the people in a large
group. This
is a simple overview of the steps you’ll have to take. Make an extra copy of the photo, but to
save disk space you can make the copy much smaller. Then, using your imaging software (even MS-Paint will do
nicely), number the people you want to identify. The simplest way to do this is to add some work space to the
photo, type in sequential numbers, then drag the numbers onto the photo (with
Draw Opaque turned off) to coordinate with the names you'll document in a
separate text file. A
detailed explanation for adding captions is provided in a separate article. === how to do a search via Ctrl-F (I’ll provide more
detail to this segment later) search
the filename (logic supports an implied AND, e.g. “2003 mich” finds
“2003;exton;michael.jpg” search
word or phrase in the file (AND logic does not apply, but it’s useful to use
filename includes .txt) |
This
article is Copyright © YaleSafe, 2008 by Yale Schwartz.