Michael Taylor Memories < Photos > Simon Bell Memories
Organising photographs
These tips can bu used to help organise and arrange your photos in folder on you computers and recommend a pattern for file names.
EXIF metadata
Digital photographs contain "EXIF" information (metadata) from the camera or phone about the photograph that makes organising photographs from a trip much easier. The date and time, and Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates are the most valuable attributes. Ensure any camera you purchase has GPS. All phones have GPS; always enable GPS on your phone camera app.
Date and time
To gain full use of these tips ensure that all cameras on a trip are set to the same date and time.
- especially after daylight saving time changes
- when travelling overseas update the date and time to local time for every timezone
After the trip upload all your photographs from the camera or phone to your computer.
Renaming photographs to include date and time in the filename
Renaming photographs to prefix the filename with date and time assists with
- chronologically arranging the photographs from different phones and cameras using the filename's date and time prefix
- avoids overwriting photographs when there are two photographs with the same name (many cameras use similar file naming schemes)
Rename all photographs to include in the file name the
- the date and time the photo was taken (use the format "yyyy-mm-dd hh.mm.ss") as the file name prefix. If the photo does have EXIF data the webteam can easily add this.
- the name of the photographer
- suffix the name with the place or description
Thus a good filename could look like "yyyy-mm-dd hh.mm.ss photoId photographer - brief description"
Automatic captions
The website can, and tries to, automatically generate captions for photographs, if the file name of the photograph follows one of two conventions:
- using this file naming convention above convention allows a caption to be automatically generated for the photograph from the filename and used on the website, see the two examples at the bottom of this page
- using the Photo Competition naming convention
Renamer tool
The best way to rename photographs on Windows is to use the free "Renamer".
Renamer uses a set of rules to rename the photograph using the internal EXIF information, and information you add to the rules.
Download suggested rules for use in Renamer.
These rules do the following
- prefix the file name with the date and time of the photograph obtained from the information from the camera in the photograph
- suffix "Your Name" to the photograph
- change the file extension to ".jpeg" (you can disable this rule)
- tidy up and remove superfluous spaces in the file name
The original file name is preserved.
After installing Renamer run it to ensure the following settings are made:
Then it is easy to right mouse click on the folder of photographs and select the "Add to Renamer" option.
Photograph folder naming
A good convention for folder naming is "yyyy-mm-dd Place or event name", eg "2021-05-12 Arthur's Pass expedition"
Panoramas
If your camera has a panorama mode use it to take a series of panoramic photos. If not try to ensure that exposure settings are as similar as is possible for each exposure. When taking photos ensure that each overlaps by ½ to ⅓ on each edge you wish to join. To join or stitch photos together there are a number of commercial products, some of which may be supplied with a camera, and the following free software:
- Microsoft Image Composite Editor (recommended, if you can still find the download on the web, or contact the webteam))
- Hugin - Panorama photo stitcher
or online
- CleVR online stitch photos
Adjusting photograph EXIF date and time
If the camera time was wrong, for example no date and time was set, in a different time zone, or the time was not updated for daylight saving, there is a free for personal use program that can help fix this - FastStone Image Viewer. Note: always make a copy of all your photographs before doing this.
Use the Change Timestamp option under Tools
Rotating photographs
Most cameras place the camera orientation when the photograph was taken in the EXIF information, eg Portrait or Landscape.
You can use the FastStone Image Viewer to losslessly rotate all portrait images (recommended).
Simply open a folder in FastStone Image Viewer, select all images (ctrl-a) then use the JPEG Lossless Rotate under Tools to Auto-Rotate based on EXIF Orientation Tag.
- this is required when displaying photographs on website. For historical compatibility reasons browsers do not action photo's orientation metadata attribute.
Other useful software
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See also
Referenced software
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