Windows Bleg: Photo Downloader, File/Folder Renamer

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Windows Bleg: Photo Downloader, File/Folder Renamer

Tuesday, December 27th, 2005 | Dear Lazyweb |

So for Christmas I bought a Panasonic FZ5 to replace our Canon PowerShot SD400 digital camera. (Quick review: I like it. The 12X zoom is wonderful, and the download speeds are much faster than my old camera.)

The photo transfer software that comes with the Panasonic is just OK. I actually prefer the Canon software. It asks for a folder name and file prefix. So if the picture file is P1000040.JPG, P1000041.JPG, etc., once I add the prefix it saves the file as 2005-12-25-Christmas-P1000040.JPG and so on, which makes finding photos easier. I liked that. Unfortunately, the Canon software bombs out when I use it to download files from the Panasonic.

Question 1- Is there a program for downloading photos from the camera that will let me control the filenames the way the Canon software did? Free is good. I like free.

LATER: Microsoft’s Scanner and Camera Wizard pretty much does the trick. PhotoBase does it perfectly. PhotoBase was one of the programs installed with the camera, but for some reason it didn’t appear on the list of autoplay options when I connected the camera to the laptop.

Question 2 - Is there a good Windows utility for doing search and replace operations on foldernames and filenames? As a ferinstance, I have some picture folders that look like 2004_09_11 and some that look like 2004-09-11, and I’d like to get everything in the same format, since Windows Explorer sorts dashes and underscores differently.

6 Comments to Windows Bleg: Photo Downloader, File/Folder Renamer

SayUncle
December 27, 2005

RE: Question 1, You can do that from a variety of programs (like Photoshop and even MS Word if you have drivers installed). I use the thing that came with Cannon. I also like ACDSee for sorting pics and such.

Jed
December 27, 2005

Re: Q2, I’ve had good luck with this utility for batch renames.

Da Goddess
December 28, 2005

Other than my very first digital cam, I’ve never used any of the software that was packaged with a camera. I tend to create a new folder for pics when I upload and include the date with the appropriate name of event. I never mix folders, either.

Les Jones
December 28, 2005

Jed: that did it. Gracias!

Unc and Goddess: it’s a personal preference thing. I like having the date and a hint about the content in the filename. I got used to it with the Canon ZoomBrowser software, and now I’m hooked.

I found out I can pretty much get what I want with the MS-Windows Photo Scanner utility that’s offered on the Autoplay menu. It doesn’t preserve the original filename, but I can live with that.

Brian
December 28, 2005

While we’re on the topic of organizing photos, I highly recommend Picasa for all of your photo-organizing needs. It’s really great for simple touch-ups. Give it a try if you get some time.

Les Jones
December 28, 2005

Brian: totally agree on Picasa. It rocks. I use it for photo tuning and generating slide shows for the site.