Renaming with a Padded Sequence Number

[Victoria Bampton]

Often, if you're renaming within Lightroom, or renaming files on export, you want to add a sequence number. By default the numbers end up with single digits which can create sort order problems in some programs, giving you 1, 1', 11... 2, 2' and so forth. Instead, you want additional padding so you get ''1, ''2, ''3... '1'.

So here's how:

Select all of the images you want to rename.

Go to Library menu > Rename Photos… or go to the Naming section of the Export dialog if you're renaming exported images.

Go to the File Naming dropdown menu, and choose Edit…

Now you’re going to create your own preset. Using the little lozenges, you can put together any combination of filename that you like. In this case, choose Sequence #(''1) instead of Sequence #(1) from the dropdown menu to get your extra zero’s padding, and hit insert. You can delete lozenges which are already there, or rearrange them to make your new naming convention.

And finally, let’s save this to use again another time. Go to the Preset dropdown menu at the top of the dialog, and choose ‘Save Current Settings as New Preset’. Give it a logical name - I’ve called mind “Sequence only - 3 digit”.

Next time you open the Rename dialog, this new preset will be one of your presets.

 

[Richard Earney]

...and it doesn't end there. You might have a particular need for many digits in your file naming system. Lightroom doesn't offer you more than 5 digits for your renames.

You could add extra digits in the rename dialog but they are not dynamic. That is when you reach 99999, Lightroom won't automatically rename the next file 1'''''.

To get round this, locate your Rename Preset in the Finder/Explorer

Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Filename Templates/
XP: C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Adobe\LightroomFilename Templates\
Vista: <systemdrive>/Users/<User Account>/AppData/Roaming/Adobe/Lightroom/Filename Templates\

Open your custom preset in a text editor and you will see this:

In this example I have padded the rename with two extra "''" characters.

Delete them in the text editor, then edit the line:

value = "naming_sequenceNumber_5Digits",

to however many digits you need (up to 9), so:

value = "naming_sequenceNumber_9Digits",

Save the file.

Restart Lightroom and you can now rename using this preset, and Lightroom will rename up to image number 999,999,999.

Richard