Rename digital photos quickly & easily

Summer is almost over – an no doubt we all have taken lots of photos – now to file them so we can find them in the future… As we all know when we take digital photos our camera names each photo with a number unique to that camera.. So once we’ve moved them to our computer, it’s helpful to rename them with a name that we can recognize. 

Personally I rename ever photo with the date it was taken and a brief name of the event… But it’s time consuming and totally unnecessary to do each photo individual – so let the computer do it for you – and that can be done using either Windows Explorer (open this with the Windows Flag Key & letter E) or for those who you Picasa you can do it there…  Here’s how…

In Windows Explorer - Use the Detail View and Sort by Date Created Or Modified so you can easily put your photos in order that they were taken before renaming them

• Select/Highlight your group of photos in your folder that currently have the camera numbers.  To highlight them either use CTRL+A for all, or use your shift or CTRL keys to select a group of random photos…
• Once the photos are highlighted that we want to “rename” right-click on the first photo, when the action menu appears, choose “Rename” from the menu. When you rename the first image in the group, all of the others you had selected will also get that name, followed by a consecutive number o they will remain in the order that you took them…
• This is a fast and easy way to group similar pictures together in a single folder. If you wanted to undo the batch renaming, all you’d need to go is highlight them all again, right-click them and choose the Undo option 

IN PICASA – Renaming a group of photos is called “Batch editing”…

Use batch editing to make the same edits to multiple photos at the same time. For example, use batch editing to auto-correct redeye for an entire album at once. Please follow these steps:

1. Select/highlight all the photos that you'd like to edit.
2. Click the Picture menu.
3. Select Batch Edit.
4. Select the editing feature that you'd like to apply to all selected photos (such as renaming)

Note.. You can undo edits for multiple photos at once by selecting those photos, then clicking the Picture menu, and selecting Undo All Edits .

How to Scan Photos Using Picasa

In our last blog posting, we described how to scan photos and documents to your computer using Picasa. Picasa is Google’s Free photo editing software – if you don’t have this on your computer, you can go to www.picasa.com and download it)..

Scanning allows us to save our photos and/or documents onto our computers in “digital format”. Most all-in-one printers today have built in scanners, but we often hear they are confusing to use. So, for an easy option, Picasa might be the right choice for you…

Once you get going, you'll find that you can easily scan 50-60 or more photos in an hour (and this is true whether you use Picasa, your scanner's software or your operating system software such as Windows Photo Gallery, so it’s a great winter or rainy day project… And it’s wonderful to know that those old family photos won’t be lost.. Here's how:

• Be sure your computer and printer/scanner are on
• Open your “Picasa” application software program
• Always scan just one “1” photo or one “1” document at a time
• Put the photo on the glass of the scanner – face down
• In Picasa, click ‘Import’
• Click the arrow for the drop down list of devices. You'll see your scanner listed, select it
• Each scanner shows a different screen, but I beleive all have an option to "Preview"
• Click the "Preview" option and now you'll see your photo
• If you want to crop the photo you can do it now or save the entire photo & crop later
• Once you're happy with, Click the button to Scan
• When it’s done scanning, you’re back at the standard Picasa Import screen
• Click Import all
• Select or create a folder to put it in
• I usually name mine: "Scan & today's date - i.e. Scan 2011.11.2"
• Now my first and subsequent photos scanned today will go in that folder
• Tomorrow I would create a new folder & name it with the correct date
• This way I can either name each individual photo or number them 1, 2, 3 etc..
• Once the photos are in the folder you want, you can certainly export them to your 'My Picture/Picture drawer - in whatever folder you want them in"

Tip: Once you have completed your scanning for the day, some of the Picasa forums recommend that you use Picasa’s Batch Edit command, and choose “I’m Feeling Lucky” and “Sharpen” to all of the photos in the “Old Photos-Today’s Date” that you just created… you can always open this again later to do individual editing of each photo you’ve now saved on your computer..