Renaming Photographs

[Phantastron]

When renaming photographs in a given contact sheet I invoke the renaming function. Under the "Please enter the photo renaming string" occurs the last string one happened to be working with in a previous contact sheet not the string under the particular photograph one is working with in the current contact sheet. Is there any way of setting up PM so that it picks up the string of the current photograph highlighted within the current contact sheet when the renaming function is invoked.
Typically when I am changing the name of a set of photographs in a given contact sheet I only want the sequence variable to be updated because I may have deleted a number of shots.  It seems that I cannot readily do this in PM. I end up with fiddling with the body portion of the name which can be a real pain if the body contains a date time portion that you do not want changed.

[Kirk Baker]

When renaming photographs in a given contact sheet I invoke the renaming function. Under the "Please enter the photo renaming string" occurs the last string one happened to be working with in a previous contact sheet not the string under the particular photograph one is working with in the current contact sheet. Is there any way of setting up PM so that it picks up the string of the current photograph highlighted within the current contact sheet when the renaming function is invoked.
Typically when I am changing the name of a set of photographs in a given contact sheet I only want the sequence variable to be updated because I may have deleted a number of shots.  It seems that I cannot readily do this in PM. I end up with fiddling with the body portion of the name which can be a real pain if the body contains a date time portion that you do not want changed.

Do you mean that you want the renaming string to be set to the name of the first selected photo?

Are you just renaming a single photo?  If so, you can just double-click on the thumbnail filename and change the name from the Contact Sheet.

-Kirk

[Phantastron]

Thank you for your comment Kirk.
What I want to do is change all or a subset of photos in a contact sheet. Assume one of the photos has a name of the form JLB_2010-10-15_003.NEF and I want to reset the 003 to 001 and have the balance of the photos follow as 002, 003 ... NNN. I select all the photos and then select JLB_2010-10-15_003.NEF in preparation to making changes to all the photos. At this point something like JLB_2008-01-15-02_057.NEF will show up in the window directly below "Please enter the photo renaming string:" which is the name of the last photo I was working on in another contact sheet. What I would like PM to do is pick up the name JLB_2010-10-15_003.NEF under "Please enter the photo renaming string:" and allow me to reset the variable to "001" and hit rename. Instead I have to edit JLB_2008-01-15-02_057.NEF to make it like JLB_2010-10-15_003.NEF before I can make the global change to the variable portion of the name.
I was not that clear on my original formulation and I hope the foregoing is not too tedious.

[Kirk Baker]

Thank you for your comment Kirk.
What I want to do is change all or a subset of photos in a contact sheet. Assume one of the photos has a name of the form JLB_2010-10-15_003.NEF and I want to reset the 003 to 001 and have the balance of the photos follow as 002, 003 ... NNN. I select all the photos and then select JLB_2010-10-15_003.NEF in preparation to making changes to all the photos. At this point something like JLB_2008-01-15-02_057.NEF will show up in the window directly below "Please enter the photo renaming string:" which is the name of the last photo I was working on in another contact sheet. What I would like PM to do is pick up the name JLB_2010-10-15_003.NEF under "Please enter the photo renaming string:" and allow me to reset the variable to "001" and hit rename. Instead I have to edit JLB_2008-01-15-02_057.NEF to make it like JLB_2010-10-15_003.NEF before I can make the global change to the variable portion of the name.
I was not that clear on my original formulation and I hope the foregoing is not too tedious.

If what you want is to remove the last three characters and add on a new {sequence} use the following:

{filenamebase:0,-3}{seqn}

Save it as a snapshot (use the lightning bolt button) so you can bring it up quickly later and call it something like "New Sequence".

HTH,

-Kirk

[Phantastron]

Excellent solution -- thank-you.