Mass File Management - About to switch back...

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I am a recent convert (January 07) and love my 15" MBP in many many ways. However, I'm about to sell it and go back to windows, and heres why:

I'm a student, but as a part time job I sell cars on eBay for a local car dealer. I have an html template written that includes 56 pictures of each vehicle, named [400 (1).jpg] through [400 (56).jpg]. The order of these pictures is vital, and its not always possibly for me to take the pictures in the order I need them to end up in.

Under WinXP, I would simply open a folder window with all the pictures for a particular car, drag and drop them into order from left to right and top to bottom, select all of them, and rename the first one 400; the rest of the files would consistantly be renamed in the same way. I could upload the folder, do a text replace for the folder name, and in 30 seconds all the pictures would be where I wanted them.

With OSX, I have found no way to do such a mass renaming of files. I bought Aperture, but when you export a picture set all semblence of order is lost - which is the most assinine thing I've ever heard of. I tried using A Better Finder's renaming utility, but I cannot control visually the orders of the pictures. File Sorter 1.7 Carbon has the same issue. It boggles my mind that such a great OS has such a poor multiple file management utility set.
 
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Not really

That still doesn't allow my to visually arrange the pictures and then rename them in the order they are up on my screen.
 

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That still doesn't allow my to visually arrange the pictures and then rename them in the order they are up on my screen.

That was my first thought as well. I know what you're talking about, and I've had the same problem/question myself.

Let's hope someone with more Mac experience than I has another suggestion.
 
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Let's hope someone with more Mac experience than I has another suggestion.

*Oh crap, wrong room...*

I've never knew you could do that on Windows XP, anyways not 100% how this works but could you try this.

Because OSX is automatically sorting them in the Show View Options have you tried turning that off, putting them in the order you require and then using the utilities above?

So Press Apple + J
Uncheck the Keep Arranged by
Check Snap to Grid
Then Close that Windo

Again I've never had to do this but it might be worth a try as I assume the Auto-Sorting is what is preventing you from putting them in the order you want them in. Just a thought.
 
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*Oh crap, wrong room...*

I've never knew you could do that on Windows XP, anyways not 100% how this works but could you try this.

Because OSX is automatically sorting them in the Show View Options have you tried turning that off, putting them in the order you require and then using the utilities above?

So Press Apple + J
Uncheck the Keep Arranged by
Check Snap to Grid
Then Close that Windo

Again I've never had to do this but it might be worth a try as I assume the Auto-Sorting is what is preventing you from putting them in the order you want them in. Just a thought.

Yes, I've tried that. The problem is that whatever I'm using to rename doesn't care how the files are arranged on the screen, either sorting the files alphanumerical or just doing it randomly.
 
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Is your MBP an intel? If so would working in bootcamp (XP) be a suitable option? Then you can still have the best of both worlds.
 
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Is your MBP an intel? If so would working in bootcamp (XP) be a suitable option? Then you can still have the best of both worlds.

Yes, its an intel, but booting into XP to rename files is far from an elegant solution. Its quicker to do what I'm currently doing, which is renaming files on a WinXP desktop then transferring to my MBP, but that is also far from elegant.
 
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Just tried doing it myself, that is fairly annoying. You assume someone must of came across this problem before and created some kind of Application to sort it out.
 
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Adobe Bridge does this kind of thing.
 
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Adobe Bridge does this kind of thing.

Can someone confirm this? Is there some way I can check for sure [a trail version perhaps?] I have no problem shelling out the money for CS3 when it comes out if it'll do what I want.
 
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You may download and give this a spin (the program's called "A Better Finder Rename"):
http://publicspace.net/ABetterFinderRename/

Installing one simple little app is a lot quicker than an OS swap.

You'll notice in my original post I said A Better Finder renaming utility doesn't do what I want - it doesn't care what order the files are on your screen.
 
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I am a recent convert (January 07) and love my 15" MBP in many many ways. However, I'm about to sell it and go back to windows, and heres why:

I'm a student, but as a part time job I sell cars on eBay for a local car dealer. I have an html template written that includes 56 pictures of each vehicle, named [400 (1).jpg] through [400 (56).jpg]. The order of these pictures is vital, and its not always possibly for me to take the pictures in the order I need them to end up in.

Under WinXP, I would simply open a folder window with all the pictures for a particular car, drag and drop them into order from left to right and top to bottom, select all of them, and rename the first one 400; the rest of the files would consistantly be renamed in the same way. I could upload the folder, do a text replace for the folder name, and in 30 seconds all the pictures would be where I wanted them.

With OSX, I have found no way to do such a mass renaming of files. I bought Aperture, but when you export a picture set all semblence of order is lost - which is the most assinine thing I've ever heard of. I tried using A Better Finder's renaming utility, but I cannot control visually the orders of the pictures. File Sorter 1.7 Carbon has the same issue. It boggles my mind that such a great OS has such a poor multiple file management utility set.

What you are relying on here is at best an unintended feature of XPs poor file management and at worst a bug!

What you have basically told the file system to do is name a selection of files with exactly the same name, in order to protect you from your own stupidity the file system has appended an identifier to the name based upon the order it processes the files.

On a single threaded file system like XP this will exhibit the behaviour you describe and which you are relying on but in a multi threaded file system (which Microsoft may have provided in Vista - see below) and especially in a multi-core system the numbering will be all over the shop as the file renaming will process in parallel.

I tried out this "feature" on Vista and it does still work on the 32 bit Basic version under Parallels but when I tried it on the 32 bit Premium version on my AMD dual core system the results were sporadic to say the least. Presumably Parallels is simulating the single threaded file system of old rather than allowing Vista to multi thread, thus ensuring maximum compatibility with older applications.

A "proper" file system will never allow duplicate filenames and unfortunately for you the file system underlying OS X is just about the most "proper" one on the planet.

Maybe it's time to learn Perl and write script to do this task properly?

(Alternatively fork out some dosh for Parallels and keep a small XP installation to do this for you, you can even drag and drop files between OS X and XP under Parallels)

Amen-Moses
 
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or better yet under coherence mode you can do it then just drag it over, automator will do this just play around with it, I am a photographer, and have to do this a lot, I would suggest honestly changing your template, because 1. Its bad filenaming principles. 2. Its easier and more cost effective. Automator works with the files in the order you give it, so it will work, you set the order, thus it works for you....
 
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The point is theres not a visual method of file arrangement, even with automator. Using the snap grid and arranging that way is at best eratic, with no visual check in Automator possible.

I realize its poor filenaming practice, but it was a quick and dirty method that worked for my purposes under WinXP.

I have found a solution, though - Adobe Photoshop Lightroom does exactly what I want, plus converts to sized jpegs in one step, meaning I will be dishing out 199 for it. Its a business expense I guess.
 

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Yes, It would be a business expense. :)
 
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I am a recent convert (January 07) and love my 15" MBP in many many ways. However, I'm about to sell it and go back to windows, and heres why:

I'm a student, but as a part time job I sell cars on eBay for a local car dealer. I have an html template written that includes 56 pictures of each vehicle, named [400 (1).jpg] through [400 (56).jpg]. The order of these pictures is vital, and its not always possibly for me to take the pictures in the order I need them to end up in.

Under WinXP, I would simply open a folder window with all the pictures for a particular car, drag and drop them into order from left to right and top to bottom, select all of them, and rename the first one 400; the rest of the files would consistantly be renamed in the same way. I could upload the folder, do a text replace for the folder name, and in 30 seconds all the pictures would be where I wanted them.

Well I'd drop this except I got a rep of "lol! what a load of bull!" from someone.

I'm sat in front of XP right now, create new folder and create 5 new files called 400 (1).txt to 400 (5).txt. Rearrange to the following order:

(5) (1) (2) (4) (3)

Select all and rename (5) to 400.txt, I know have:

[400.txt] [400 (1).txt] [400 (2).txt] [400 (4).txt] & [400(5).txt]

What happened to 3?

Try "Undo Rename" and I now have

[400.txt] [400 (1).txt] [400 (2).txt] [400 (4).txt] [400 (3).txt]

Not quite as weird as the results in Vista but it sure aint doing it on purpose, personally I'd go with my original "worst case" it's a bug!

Amen-Moses
 
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Well I'd drop this except I got a rep of "lol! what a load of bull!" from someone.

I'm sat in front of XP right now, create new folder and create 5 new files called 400 (1).txt to 400 (5).txt. Rearrange to the following order:

(5) (1) (2) (4) (3)

Select all and rename (5) to 400.txt, I know have:

[400.txt] [400 (1).txt] [400 (2).txt] [400 (4).txt] & [400(5).txt]

What happened to 3?

Try "Undo Rename" and I now have

[400.txt] [400 (1).txt] [400 (2).txt] [400 (4).txt] [400 (3).txt]

Not quite as weird as the results in Vista but it sure aint doing it on purpose, personally I'd go with my original "worst case" it's a bug!

Amen-Moses

I'm not saying what I was doing was a feature, it just happened to be a method that, for whatever reason, worked for my purposes. Lightroom is making the whole process quicker and easier on my MBP, and I'm tickled to death.

In regards to things dissapearing, when I was still doing things that way, I noticed renaming the files like you did above exhibited weird behavoir - they key to getting the behavoir I desired was to always change the base name, ie I'd put everything in order then change the first one from 400 (XX).jpg to 401.jpg and it would work consistantly.

Again, Lightroom solves my problems - I wish Aperture would conserve user defined orders when exporting, but alas it does not so I'm going with adobe.
 

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