Note: This tutorial has been checked and moved for Photoshop CS6. The new Tutorial can be found here.
In this tutorial we will show you how to rename dozen or even hundred of images at a time with Photoshop CS5 batch processing capabilities. This technique will work in all version of Photoshop including Photoshop Elements. I am doing this tutorial as I have noticed a lot of people searching my site for it and getting pages that relate to other batch processing items but if you use those methods you could wind up losing a lot of files or just doing nothing at all. Recording a normal action and telling it to rename a file simply won’t work.
Photoshop CS5: Batch Renaming Multiple Images
Luckily for us photoshop has already built in a process for us to rename our images and includes quite a number of options to help us customise how we rename our files. Naturally for Photoshop elements the options are far more limited but for normal CS5 and other versions we have lots of choices.
OK so we have just downloaded a whole folder of images off our camera or some other device, this is the most common reason we would want to do something like this. Rather than sit there and do them by hand we are now going to let Photoshop do all the work for us.
Our first step in Photoshop is to select the files we wish to rename so hit Shift-Ctr-O to open bridge up. Once it is open navigate to where you images are locate and open the folder. Assuming that you wanted to process all the files you would hit Ctr-A to select all the files. If you want to select a few files that are together click on the first file then hold shift and click on the last file to select multiple files. If the files you want arn’t together in the folder you would need to to Ctr-click on each one to select them.
Now that we have our images selected right click on one of the highlighted images and select Batch Rename from the menu that appears. This will open a dialog box with our file renaming options.
If we are working with the originals we would probably want to keep a copy of them so I would recommend selecting Copy to other folder and hit the destination button to let it know where to put the renamed files. This will ensure no matter what you do down the track you will have a backup of the images.
Underneath that is a box entittled New Filenames, each line in that box is a component of what will form the new names of the files. The default first line has the option text selected, if you wish to have text at the begining of your file name you would enter the text you want in the feild beside it. The text feild type is also helpful for putting in underscores (there is actually an example of it in use on the default screen.)
Sequence number allows you to select how many digits you want for numbering of files and the text box allows you to enter the number you wish to begin at.
Other feild types allow you to include meta data and dates etc, So there are lots of options available to you. If you need another feild you simply need to hit the plus sign on the right and another feild will be added, select your feild type and enter your values.
I would recommend ticking the preserve current file in metadata tickbox.
Once you are ready to rename your files simply hit the Rename button and let photoshop do it magic.
Hope this was helpful and see you again soon.