How do I...?

[expeditionist]

Hi there

I have 4',''' photos on my hard disk which have been catalogued in Lightroom with labels and ratings and metadata.

Unfortunately, the photos are stored on my hard disk without any sort of logical filing system - nonsensical folder names, sequentially numbered file names with no custom text, etc. - I sould have sorted out the file folders and names before cataloguing the photos into Lightroom but I didn't and feel like a bit of an idiot now!

Has anyone else wanted to do anything like this and been unable to?

I love Lightroom but one of the things I hate is it's limited options to organise and rename the photos on disk.

Is there any way for me to rename these folders and files now using custom text and dates, e.g. folder - Place, filename - YYYYMMDD.NEF without losing the photos from my Lightroom catalogue and therefore losing the ratings and labels applied to these photos in Lightroom?

And how should I batch rename 4'''' photos making sure that both the RAW file and the corresponding XMP sidecar file keep the same name - I don't want to lose the metadata files.

I would appreciate any comments.

Thanks for your help.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

The easiest answer is 'whatever you do, do it in Lightroom'. So you can drag the folders around with Lightroom, rename the folders within Lightroom, rename the images with Lightroom etc and your settings will be safe. Lightroom will rename any xmp files at the same time.

I'd suggest you do small batches, rather than 4',''' in one go, just in case it crashed part way through, and make sure you've got backups before you start. Other than that, you should be fine.

And welcome to the forum!

 

[expeditionist]

Thanks Victoria

It wasn't immediately obvious to me that I could get the F2 Rename in Lightroom to process batches and rename based on the metadata but I see now that it does do that.

If moving photos from one folder to another folder withing Lightroom - Lightroom refuses the whole batch if a photo already exists in the destination folder - is there any way to get Lightroom to overwrite the old photos with the new ones?

Thanks

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Unfortunately no, and it's something I've been begging for the team to address. Add your voice via the Official Feature Request/Bug Report Form

 

[wblink]

It wasn't immediately obvious to me that I could get the F2 Rename in Lightroom to process batches and rename based on the metadata but I see now that it does do that.

If moving photos from one folder to another folder withing Lightroom - Lightroom refuses the whole batch if a photo already exists in the destination folder - is there any way to get Lightroom to overwrite the old photos with the new ones?
Thanks

Sorry, just a thought: isn't it an option to delete the existing photo's in LR or Win/Mac?