Rename a group of photos

Question

I want to remane a group of photo of my holidays. For example, I have:

DSC_0001.JPG
DSC_0002.JPG
...

And I want to obtain:

Malta-(date)-01.jpg
Malta-(date)-02.jpg
...

Where Malta is the name I choose and (date) is the date of the photo. In addition, I want to add a number that rise with time of the day (a photo taken at 9.00 is 001 and a photo taken at 9.01 is 002). I want to fill the number with 0 in order to obtain always the same name length (for example, if I have 1500 photo the first is 0001, if I have only 56 photos the first is 01). The number will restart each day.

Is there any free software (or command line tool) that can do that? I use Mac OS X Lion.

Ps: I can use the hour when the photo is taken instead of numbers.

EDIT: I used Apple's Automator but I had to choose between data or number. It is impossible to use data and hour.

Answer 1

Before you start... backup your files

Since you're using a Mac - I would try http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

see http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/filename.html

Writing "FileName" and "Directory" tags By writing the FileName and/or Directory tags, ExifTool can be used to rename and/or move images into directories according to any information contained in the image. The most common use of this feature is to organize images by date/time, but any other tag value may also be used.

Answer 2

As you're using a Mac, the following does not apply, but it may help Windows users.

Irfanview can do batch rename/conversion. For your example I'd use a name pattern like:

Malta-($T(%d_%m_%Y))-##

That will change the names to this:

Malta-(14_04_2008)-01.jpg

Malta-(14_04_2008)-02.jpg

Malta-(14_04_2008)-03.jpg

Answer 3

You were going to get the Apple Aperture, right? Aperture can make that easy for you.

I can't recommend any free program because I don't know anything about them. but you can search for "free photo batch rename tool" or similar to learn about this.

Also see this: http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/the-top-3-batch-picture-manipulation-apps-to-batch-rename-convert-and-resize-your-photos/