[Digikam-users] Renaming files

[Tauri]

Hi David,

On Sat, 17 May 2008, David Aldred wrote:
> However, I'd prefer to go back to fully date/time based file numbering
> (such as  2008-01-31-15:00:03.jpg) for all my pictures.   Is there any way
> of achieving this within Digikam?   Batch Rename doesn't seem to allow me
> to omit a sequence number!    

It appears you can do this when downloading photos using Digikam[1], but I 
don't think the batch rename tool allows you to omit the sequence number.  
I've been using an external tool to rename my photos - I recommend the 
excellent "jhead" program for this purpose.  (Info at 
http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/  )

Invoked with the following command, it will rename your photos to 
YYYYMMDD-HHMMSS, eg 20080513-015023.jpg.  (There are many other options - 
check out the man page for details on how to rename to the example you gave 
above.)

	jhead -n"%Y%m%d-%H%M%S"  *

>  (In the very unusual case in which I've more than one from the same
> second, I'll handle it manually.)

By default, if a target name already exists, jhead will append a letter to 
distinguish them.  (eg 20080516-054050.jpg, 20080516-054050a.jpg) 

jhead can do all sorts of other stuff at the same time, including 
automatically rotate photos to the correct orientation.  

Back to Digikam - there appears to be a relevant entry in the KDE bugs 
database regarding the "batch rename" tool.  You may wish to add your votes 
or comments here:  http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=155677

Hope this helps.

cheers,
Tauri

[1]  Note that if renaming with Digikam when downloading, Digikam appears to 
adjust date/time stamps for your time zone (my camera is set to UTC but 
digikam renames to local time.)  This may be A Good Thing or not, depending 
on your needs.