Photoshop 7 File Browser Automatic Numbering Technique

The File Browser added to Photoshop 7 is a great tool for managing your digital images. This is especially the case for digital camera photographs and assisting in renaming the files into something more intelligible than the “P100198.JPG” that various operating systems force upon us.

The File Browser permits renaming of photos using typed in text, a date, dot extension and in this instance – a serial number.

In this hidden feature, we can rename images with a starting serial number, that is not “1”.

Step 1: Here we have a collection of images in a particular directory

Step 2: Select the images you wish to rename, rigt click on one of the images (MacOS: control click) and select Batch Rename

Step 3: The magic. Here we use the “File Naming” section to create the style or template of the resulting file name. In this instance, I want my files to start with the text nz July and starting from a serial number of 88. The pound sign at the beginning and end of the 088 indicate I would like this to be a serial number. The extension is substituted with .jpg, .gif — depending on the file type.

Step 4: The final result. As you can see, the images are now renamed using the above rules, and a starting serial number that is not 1.