Renaming Files in Elements Organizer and Adobe Bridge

From the Manual - Elements Organizer

  • From Photoshop Elements Editor, click on Organizer.
  • In Organizer, click on Import > From Files and Folders.
  • Navigate to the folder on your desktop and click Get Media.
  • In the Menu Bar, choose View and place a checkmark next to Details and File Names.
  • If you cannot see the exact date of the files, make the images larger in the Zoom slider.
  • To select a group of images, click on the first one, then hold down the Shift key and click on the last one.
  • In the Menu Bar, choose File > Rename.
  • Enter a new name and click OK. 

From the Manual - Adobe Bridge

Recommended: Download Adobe Bridge

  • In the Folders panel, navigate to and click on the folder you created for your album.
  • Press Ctrl A (Mac: Cmd A) to select all the photos in the folder.
  • In the Menu Bar, choose Tools > Batch Rename.
  • In the dialog box, set the Destination Folder to Rename in Same Folder.
  • For New Filenames, in the first field choose Date Time, then Date Created, then YYYYMMDD.
  • Click on the + icon to add another filename adjustment.
  • Set the first field to Text.
  • In the next field, add a dash, the overall topic of the photos, and then another dash.
  • Click on the + icon to add another filename adjustment.
  • Set the first field to Current Filename.
  • Set the next field to Number Suffix.
  • Click Rename. 

From the Transcript - Elements Organizer

Now that all your travel memories are in one place, let’s rename them so they appear in chronological order. The problem with a folder of files like this is that they are all out of order. In my collection I have scans and video screenshots and documents and photos. The biggest renaming job is the photos, so this video is decimated specifically to renaming photos in Elements Organizer.

Why rename?

The reason I’m suggesting that you rename all your files to match is to help make sure that you don’t miss anything when putting them in your album. There are many ways you can go about renaming your files, but here is the process that I use.

From Photoshop Elements Editor, click on Organizer. Then click on Import > From Files and Folders. Navigate to the folder on your desktop and click Get Media. Then in the Menu Bar, choose View and place a checkmark next to Details and File Names. If you cannot see the exact date of the files, make the images larger in the Zoom slider.

Next select a group of images that have similar dates and places. To do that click on the first one, then hold down the shift key and click on the last one. This selects all the images between the first and last. In the Menu Bar, choose File > Rename. Enter what the images all have in common, such as the date, country, city, or whatever and then click OK. 

Notice how Organizer placed the characters you specified at the beginning of those filenames, then it added a number after each filename to set it apart from the others. 

From the Transcript - Adobe Bridge

Now that all your travel memories are in one place, let’s rename them so they appear in chronological order. The problem with a folder of files like this is that they are all out of order. In my collection I have scans and video screenshots and documents and photos. The biggest renaming job is the photos, so this video is dedicated specifically to renaming photos in Adobe Bridge.

Bridge is now a stand alone product that can be downloaded for free on Adobe’s website. You’ll find a link to it in the class manual. But first, you maybe wondering, why rename?

The reason I’m suggesting that you rename all your files to match is to help make sure that you don’t miss anything when putting them in your album. There are many ways you can go about renaming your files, but here is the process that I use.

In Adobe Bridge open the folders panel by going into the menu bar and choosing Window > Folders. In the Folders panel navigate to the folders that contains the photos on your desktop. And then for this next step, we are going to clearly be able to see what date all of the photos were taken on. To do that go into the menu bar and choose View > As List.

If you can't clearly see the full date in the date created column, then click on the divider between the date and the size and drag it to slightly the right, then click on date created to sort by date. The 1st photo in my list was taken on 9/21/2017 and there is only 1 of these photos, so I am going to activate that photo all by itself. 

Then in the Menu Bar choose Tools > Batch Rename. In the dialog box set the destination folder to rename in same folder. Then in New file names click on the 1st dropdown folder and choose Date Time. In the 2nd drop down menu choose date created. Then in the 3rd drop down menu choose YYYYMMDD.

You can watch the file names transform in the preview at the bottom of the dialog box. It is very important to watch this area and see how things are looking. It not only will show you what results you are going to get, but it also let’s you know how many images are being processed. So in this case I know that the data I entered above is going to change 1 file and this is what the file name is going to look like when I am finished.

This is a great start, but i also want to add some text of my file names. To do that click on the + icon in New File Names. Click to open the 1st drop menu and choose text. Then type in some text. I am going to type in - - Germany. Mainly because that was the destination of this vacation.

This particular photo was just taken somewhere over the ocean, so I am not going to add any additional information to this particular one. Now let’s look down in the preview area and again there is still one 1 file being processed, which is exactly what I want, and here is what my new file name will look like.

But let’s take this one step further and add a number suffix. Again in new file names Click on the + icon. This time click on the drop down menu and choose Current File Name. Notice how the preview is changing along with the changes I am making up here. Click on the 2nd drop down menu and choose Number Suffix. By doing this the original number 942 that was given to the image when it was captured is also being included in the new file name. Here you can also see the 942.

But I want to add a - between the Germany and the 942, so i will go back up to the next field and after Germany I will add - and now you can see in the preview, that my new file name will be the date, the country, and then the number suffix. Again, one files is being processed. I will go ahead and click Rename. 

Now let’s try that one more time with a different batch of photos. And again i am going to look for Images that were taken on the same date and somewhat in the same place. I know on 9/22 my daughter and her husband were in the same city so I will click on the 1st Sept. 22nd image and I will scroll down and find the last Sept. 22 image. To click on that I will hold down the Shift key and when I click on it all the Sept. 22nd images are active. 

And just like before in the Menu bar I will choose Tools > Batch Rename. Right away down in preview I can see 44 files are going to be processed. They are going to be processed with this date 9/22, which is what I want. They are going to be from Germany, which is also what I want. But I want to add the city they were in, so when I click at the end of the text field and type in the city, and then add a hyphen. Notice the fields I used before are sticky, so there’s not much you need to change from each batch of photos. So when the preview down here looks great to you go ahead and click rename. 

Back in the content panel if I go ahead and sort my images by name again and then scroll down again you can see that bridge has aligned all of my images with the documents that I created earlier and that’s because they are now all named with the same convention. So that is how you rename images in Adobe Bridge so that they are all in order in your folder.

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