Looks like no one’s replied in a while. To start the conversation again, simply ask a new question.

How to do this kind of Move and Rename? Please help.

I save pictures a lot, and usually they clutter up on my Desktop until I organize them later into category folders. My folders are like this:

VACATION PICTURES (Folder Name), and inside the pictures go: Vacation_1, Vacation_2, Vacation_3, etc.

I'd like to be able to click on the cluttered pictures on my Desktop, select my Automator action (Move and Rename), and then have the Automator pop-up ASK me where I want to put the pictures (because I have a lot of folders, such as "Vacation Pictures," "Pet Pictures"), then ASK me what to rename them. Or, better yet, I want Automator (or maybe another program) to automatically know what to rename the files based on what folder I select to move them to. For example, if I first direct the pictures to be moved to the "Vacation Pictures" folder, in which all the files are Vacation_1, Vacation_2, Vacation_3, etc., I want the program to automatically rename the newly-moved pictures and continue the existing sequence by going Vacation_54, Vacation_55, etc.

So I want Automator to automatically continue the already existing sequence in the folder. After the move, I want it to automatically figure out what the name will be and the sequence number to start on to join the others.

Is this at all possible with Automator or any other program? Thank you so much!

G5 23 Cinema Display Western Digital External HD

Posted on Sep 1, 2009 7:04 PM

Reply
6 replies

Sep 1, 2009 8:43 PM in response to iPodGirl

I think AppleScript would be easier than Automator to do this with, it's more flexible. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if an AppleScript application could be made with Xcode (aka Applescript Studio) to do something like this. Either way, it could take some time before you could do anything if someone hasn't doesn't something like that already. Have you used the search feature in the AppleScript forums to find out if someone has some sort of image or picture or pic organizer? You might even try Google.

However, what you've described sounds like it's verging on micromanaging, and it seems very time consuming. Have you consider the possibilities of iPhoto and maybe going along with something it can provide? For instance, is it really necessary to name each pic if they are already grouped? Personally, I'd rather tag them since then I only have to spell the tag once and then can easily find a variety of photos from several albums. For example, all the pics with flowers, or statues, or paintings, and what not. I hardly have any photos named in iPhoto and depend mostly on tags or the names of albums. It may not be worth renaming the old generic names with new generic names.

Also, iPhoto is more specialized for managing images, while the Finder is generally for any type of file and therefore isn't very specialized for any particular type.

Similarly, genres for music are useless to me and I'd rather tag songs with moods and subjects. So, I changed all the genre field into something more informative and that could be used for grouping the music into Smart Playlists by search criteria based on keywords in the genre field. Much more useful and worked like a great pre-Genuis option years before they added that.

Anyways, just some suggestions for creating more flexible approach towards your hundreds of photos. It's helped me find what I want with both photos and music, in particular allowing me to create smart albums or playlists that automatically update themselves with new items whenever I tag another photo or song. No need to organize each and every single photo by dragging and dropping them into several relevant folders. They just show up where they fit in based on their tags, everywhere they belong. Though I have thousands of photos, I've gradually added tags to the older pics I had before tagging, and I definitely tag new ones as soon as I import them in iPhoto.

Of course, you might have some fantastic plans needing this initial foundation you are suggesting. Personally, I cringe at the thought of ever doing what you are suggesting because I used to do things that way. And I never got done. Ever. With anything. And I figured out I really wanted something else. But that's me, and I just thought I'd throw these other ideas out there for you to reconsider your, uhm, adventure you have planned for yourself. :-D

Good luck! I'm sure it can be done! And I hope it turns out to be useful for you! Go for it! 🙂

Sep 1, 2009 9:22 PM in response to Community User

Thanks for the suggestion. That's very nice of you! 🙂 I'd love to work in iPhoto, but I don't like how the changes to picture titles in the program are not reflected in the original file names. For my purposes, I need the original files to be organized, too, because I work outside of iPhoto.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to work with AppleScripts.

Message was edited by: iPodGirl

Sep 2, 2009 8:14 AM in response to iPodGirl

You could use "Rename Finder Items", with make sequential. The only thing is, you'll be renaming the whole folder every time it runs, so you might want to name the files with a special character first like "*Vacation_1" which should insure that new files are added to the end of the list.

It might look something like this: You have picture folders "Vacation", "Pets", "Family". When you have new pictures, you manually add to the correct folder, then run this workflow.

Get Specified Finder Items: Folder "Vacation"
Get Folder Contents
Rename Finder Items: Make Sequential, new name "*Vacation" etc.

break link

Get Specified Finder Items: Folder "Pets"
Get Folder Contents
Rename Finder Items: Make Sequential, new name "*Pets" etc.

break link

Get Specified Finder Items: Folder "Family"
Get Folder Contents
Rename Finder Items: Make Sequential, new name "*Family" etc.

Sep 2, 2009 12:22 PM in response to iPodGirl

Have you tried to use a variable to grab the folder name? I don't really think it can, though I have sent some suggestions on how useful it could be and ways to do modify Automator's interface to provide access to such data. Hopefully 10.7 will have it since 10.6 wasn't about adding such major interface changes.

If nothing else, surely a liitle AppleScript could pull the folder name from the selected folder. However, you may need to use more AppleScript to use the name since I'm not sure if it can be used in other actions. I'm on the bus heading to an Apple Store to ask a question of my own, so I haven't tested this out yet.

Sep 2, 2009 12:48 PM in response to Community User

+I'd like to be able to click on the cluttered pictures on my Desktop, select my Automator action (Move and Rename), and then have the Automator pop-up ASK me where I want to put the pictures (because I have a lot of folders, such as "Vacation Pictures," "Pet Pictures"), then ASK me what to rename them.+

Okay, I think you can do this. You would use:

Use "Ask for Finder items" action to select the desired folder, then when you set up the rename action, check the box that says "Show this action when the workflow runs" (You will need to click the "options" button at the bottom of the action to find this)

Getting the kind of intelligence to have it automatically know where to put things and how to sequentially number, is probably a bit much to do in Automator.

I would probably set this up as a folder action where you would drag and drop the files to be processed onto a hot folder to run the action.

Message was edited by: KatieS1975

How to do this kind of Move and Rename? Please help.

Welcome to Apple Support Community
A forum where Apple customers help each other with their products. Get started with your Apple ID.