In my last blog post, I suggested it was a good idea to start a consistent naming convention.  Now, I’ll show you how easy it is to allow ACDSee to do most of the work for you.

When you choose to import your photos, you are presented with the import dialog box that has many options.

Basic Naming Convention:

In the first example, I will start with the standard basic naming conventions.  I’ll store all my photos in one folder.  They will be organized by year, date & month and each individual image will be named with the date & time the photo was taken.

What the folder structure and filenames will look like when imported:

• At the top, choose which photos you want to import.
• Choose Place in subfolders and choose Nested folders – file’s date and choose format yyyy\MM\dd.
• Choose Rename files to Date/time – sequence number
• Choose Import

More Advanced Naming with naming folders with event:

The second example, I will only import images for a certain event.  In this case, it was a trip to San Diego.  This will produce a folder called 03_SanDiegoTrip and same file naming as above.

• At the top, choose the photos that are for the event.  In this case, I chose the dates we were on the trip and this chooses all the images from those dates.
• Choose Place in subfolders and choose Single folder by name and then name your folder.  In my case, I named 03_SanDiegoTrip (for month and event)
• Choose Rename files to Date/time – sequence number
• Choose Import
• Repeat for other events to import all pictures.

More Advancing Naming with naming files with the event:

The third example, I will only again import images for a certain event.  But this time I will them go into default Year, Month, Day file structure but will rename the individual files.

• At the top, choose the photos that are for the event.  In this case, I chose the dates we were on the trip and this chooses all the images from those dates.
• Choose Place in subfolders and choose Nested folders – file’s date and choose format yyyy\MM\dd.
• At the end of Rename files to: choose Edit… and edit the template.  I inserted the event between the date and sequence #. 

 

• Click OK and Save this template.
• Choose Import
• Repeat for other events to import all pictures.

Suggestions:

You can easily do many filename modifications by editing Rename files to templates. Use the different default ones or create more of your own.  While creating the template, you can choose Insert Metadata… and add many different pieces of information from the camera.

Once you have the settings to your liking, make sure you save your template and then you can easily choose that template whenever you start.