Renaming photos without using Sequence

[Jack Baty]

I would like to rename a selection of images using {iptcdate}_{caption}. I am unable to do so, as the rename button is disabled and there is a message in the Rename dialog stating "Please sequence or us another renaming variable". This happens even if none of the captions are the same. Even if the captions _were_ the same, I'd expect the collision settings to handle name collisions. Doesn't seem that using a sequence number would be necessary. The rename works fine with a single image selected.

Should I be able to rename this way or am I missing something?

PM Version 5.0, build 16438 (e61be25) on Retina iMac running 10.10.3

Thanks

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[Kirk Baker]

The caption variable is not meant to be used for renaming.  It can be thousands of letters long.  Your captions may be short enough to be used as a filename, but many captions are entire paragraphs of text.

-Kirk

[Jack Baty]

I hadn't considered that. Makes sense, thanks.

[judophotos]

Jack,

If you want to use just the first 30 or 40 characters of the caption you can do it with: {capt:0,30}......  I think that is right as I used something similar with an earlier website I had for the first 100 characters of the caption in an entirely different field but now no longer require it.

It is best to follow the shortened caption with a few dots to show that it is a summary of sorts.

Best regards,
David

[Kirk Baker]

David,

If you want to use just the first 30 or 40 characters of the caption you can do it with: {capt:0,30}......  I think that is right as I used something similar with an earlier website I had for the first 100 characters of the caption in an entirely different field but now no longer require it.

It is best to follow the shortened caption with a few dots to show that it is a summary of sorts.

I don't recommend putting multiple periods in a filename.  It can certainly trip up some programs from properly identifying your files.

Jack,

Also, simply limiting the caption to a shorter length still won't make the Rename dialog think that the Caption is suitable for renaming.  If you really must use the caption, you could put an excerpt of it (by using the above limits described by David) in the Edit Status field and then use {editstatus} in your renaming.

-Kirk

[judophotos]

Sorry Kirk,

I meant that the periods would follow the bracket so that the shortened file name would look something like this:

Frederic Demontfaucon of France excite.........      resulting from this {caption:0,40}.....

It used to work for me.

David

[Jack Baty]

Thanks for the additional info. {iptcdate}_{caption:0,40} doesn't work, as Kirk noted.

I've moved the renaming part of the process to Lightroom, as it allows using the Caption as a rename variable.