How to Use the Batch Renaming Function in Adobe Bridge CS3

So now we have seen how to add a copyright notice to these images, but what if we wanted to change the filename of the images we are working with here inside of Bridge. Well, there is a couple of ways we can do that. You can name files anything you want one by one simply by clicking inside of the image name here. Now, by default, you will notice that Bridge protects the file extensions so that's kind of nice. You don't have to worry about overwriting the file extension and changing it to something accidentally. You can actually type in anything you want here and name these images one at a time or you can take advantage of one of Bridge's most functional features and that is the Batch Renaming function.

So what I am going to do now is I am going to click off of that image just so I can restore that filename back to the way it was and I am going to start my Batch Rename. So in order to do that what I am going to have to do is select multiple images first that I want to Batch Rename, so I will only select the ones where she is in this white room with the chair here. So I will select Amy Lee-5.jpg, Amy Lee-6.jpg, Amy Lee-7.jpg and Amy Lee-8.jpg and with those images selected what I am going to do now is come up to the Tools menu. The very first option in the Tools menu is Batch Rename or you can simply hit the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Shift+R on PC, Command+Shift+R on the Mac. Once you open up that dialog box, you have all of these different options here waiting for you to create whatever filename that you may want to do.

So what you can do here at the top is select your destination folder. So if you wanted to rename them in the same folder which means you are just going to overwrite the original files and change their name, which is what we are going to do in this particular case here, you could do so by checking that little circle right next to the phrase Rename in same folder. Or if you no longer wanted those images to be in the same folder, you could select Move to other folder right here and that would rename the files and move them to the folder that you select.

Now once you select one of these options either Move or Copy here, you should get the Browse button to appear here. What this is going to allow you to do is just select a destination for you to put those new files. So if you are moving files to another folder, you will just be moving the files outside of the current folder they are in and deleting their presence in that current folder. However, if you are copying to another folder, what you'll be doing with that is you will actually be making a copy of those images, renaming the images and moving those copies to another folder. So your original images stay static in the exact same place they are now, but you will create copies of them in another folder with that new name.

So just to kind of clarify there the difference between move and copy, because I know that confuses some people when they are Batch Renaming, so if you want new files with different filenames, select Copy, if you want to move your current files and just change the filename on those to a different folder, select Move. Now for this particular demonstration I am going to go back and select Rename in same folder because we are just going to rename these inside of the same folder we are working in, here our Chapter 02 Project Files folder.

Now what we are going to do is move down here to the New filename section of the Batch Rename dialog box and let's start to edit some of the parameters of the new renaming that we are going to do here. So, for instance, here you can select the text that you have at the very beginning of the document. So, for instance, here it's listed as project and you see down here at the bottom you can get an updated preview of what you are going to be renaming these files to.

So the Current filename is Amy Lee-5.jpg and the new name would be Project_20070320_0001.jpg. Now that's a really long filename and we are not going to have it to be that long. So what I am going to do now is just change the word Project. I will change that to Amy in White Room, just like that. I am also going to take off the date created, because I really don't need that because that's stored parametrically in the metadata anyway. So if I wanted to filter by that later on, I could do so in the Filter pane as I showed you earlier.

So I will go ahead and take that off and when I do that you will notice that only the parameters that I have setup here now show up in the bottom Preview. So now I have Amy in White Room with the underscore and then the numbers right behind that. So what I can do now, if I wanted to I could actually take out that underscore if I don't need that, but I actually like the separation between what I am calling these files and the sequential number that I am adding to them. So I am going to go ahead and leave that middle text option alone and now let's take a look at the sequence number.

Now if you want to change the sequence number here you can do so, you can say that you want this to start at 0, for instance, if you wanted to. Or if you are continuing a series of images from another set of images, what you could do is start this off with any number you wanted to. For instance, if you were working in a previous folder of images and that ended at say 25, you could go ahead and type in 26 here and your new set of images would continue with 26, 27, 28, and so forth and so on. So there is really no problem with continuing on with series numbers here because you can do that from right within the Sequence Number tab here inside the Batch Rename dialog box.

Now you can change the amount of digits that you have in this particular Sequence Number as well. If you don't want Four Digits you could change to One, Two, Three, all the way up to Six Digits if you choose to. I don't recommend that you change it to Six Digits because that's going to be a really, really long filename. However, if you have a multitude of images that require six digits, feel free to go ahead and change it to that, I am not going to stop you. But I am just going to leave this on the default of Four Digits like so. So we are done with our renaming filename portion of this.

So we can go ahead and move on now to the Options dialog box. Here in the Options down here you will notice that you have the ability to preserve current filename in XMP Metadata. What that means is it's going to save the current filename such as Amy Lee-5.jpg. It's going to save that into the metadata. So if at any time you lose this file or you can't find it or whatever, that original filename is stored in the metadata, so somehow you can go in there and you can locate that file simply by entering in that old filename.

So that old filename is still going to be associated with that image as long as you check this option on. I will go ahead and check that option on just so I can have that included in there. It doesn't take up any more extra space on the image and it's just a better way to keep track of your file. So I will go ahead and turn that option on.

The last thing we are going to take a look at here inside of the Batch Rename dialog box is the Compatibility. Now depending on what machine type you are working on as far as platforms like Mac, Windows or UNIX is concerned, you are going to see different options here. For instance, right now I am working on a Windows machine so the Windows Compatibility option is automatically grayed out. Same would be true if I were working on a Mac, for instance, then I would only see the Windows and UNIX tabs because the Mac option would be grayed out.

So what you need to do here is you need to make sure that these files are compatible for any operating system just in case you happen to need to send these off anywhere. You want to make sure that the filenames are compatible with other operating systems. So whatever options you have available to you here, whether it be Mac OS or UNIX, go ahead and check all of the boxes that apply here so that you can ensure that you have the maximum filename compatibility across the board.

Now once you have done that you can go ahead and come up here to the