Lightroom: Bulk renaming - 'Reset each day' sequence option.

Just out of interest - is naming this way unusual? I thought it would be pretty normal, so be standard functionality. What does everyone else do?

Everyone does something different. Personally I use date-time, so 20110823-2302.jpg

I recently went from a short-n-sweet scheme, to a long-n-ordered-properly-alphabetically scheme.

{date}{photog-initials}{time}{camera-id}{camera-image-#}.{ext}

example:

20110823RC130422NB3201.NEF

This way, an alphabetic sort groups by day, but doesn't mix photos from different photographers, then by time, but doesn't mix shots taken with different cameras, and orders bursts properly.

Note: RC stands for Rob Cole, and NB stands for 2nd Nikon I've owned (Nikon "B").

pros: ordered the way I want when alphabetic sorting employed, and still includes original image number from card for (usually short-term) association under unusual circumstances (e.g. returning to card to fetch an inadvertently lost image...).

cons: long, and a little hard to read, although photog-initials and camera-id break up the numbers some (I've gotten quite good at reading it after an initial adaptation period).

Historical Anecdote:
--------------------------
I got tired of having my photos displayed in whacky order on various devices - problem solved (all devices I use have alphabetic sorting option).

Final Thoughts:
--------------------
Now that I've adapted, I *love* the new scheme. Unfortunately the name gets truncated in shrunken viewing modes, but so far its been a very worthwhile tradeoff. PS - I like being able to know photographer and camera used without resorting to metadata, not to mention time-of-day...

Note: This scheme is theoretically compatible with Lightroom, *but* Lightroom's importer sometimes uses UTC time and sometimes uses local time! Hopefully fixed in Lr4 (I use an import plugin which does not suffer this malfliction). YMMV.

-R

Alll that matters to me is that the filenames are unique. So I use yyyymmdd_{original-filename} during import. (my different bodies create different root-filenames). I don't care about "holes" in the numbering.

That gives me for example: 20110813_IMG_0011.cr2

Beat

As long as you don't add another canon to the mix, in which case you'd need to alter your scheme, at least for the new canon...

Another option for OP if still open for a scheme, and likes your style:

yyyymmdd_{camera-id}_{camera-image-#}.{ext}

for example:

20110813_C1_0011.CR2, then if you get another canon:
20110813_C2_0101.CR2

To me, the biggest (so far unmentioned ) advantage of Beat's original scheme is that you can use one import preset for all different cameras, instead of having to remember to select a proper import preset for each camera. And, it works regardless of what the various Lr sequence numbers do...

Other photo software has this capability, for example Downloader Pro or Photo Supreme, so it can't be that hard to implement.