Renaming Files in Lightroom

My renaming convention in Photoshop has been to use brackets (e.g.,[xxxx]) with custom text within the brackets appended after the original filename. It appears that brackets are illegal characters so far as Lightroom is concerned and a "near" (but unreadable to me <g>) character is inserted in its place. Strangely, however, brackets that have been previously inserted in the file by any other program are readable. <br /><br />The only workaround that I have come up with is to continue to rename in Bridge 2.0. I must then remove the files from the dataset and reimport them.<br /><br />Is there a better way to continue my naming convention?

Hi Franz,
Let me clarify a couple things (I hope Adobe is listening):
1.     I am merely copying and renaming on import. I am not moving the original files.
2.     Files are created in my TO: directory, they just contain the origianl filename.
3.     I tried the exact same procedure with LR2 and it works fine.
It appears there may be a bug in the software.
Eric

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Hi Franz,
Let me clarify a couple things (I hope Adobe is listening):
1.     I am merely copying and renaming on import. I am not moving the original files.
2.     Files are created in my TO: directory, they just contain the origianl filename.
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In the Library Module, you select a photo that has already been imported, and click on "Develop", or press D. This allows you to edit your photos.
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I import my pictures into Lightroom using the following format YYYYMMDD - XXXX. For example, a picture with a file number 2113 taken on Dec 16th, 2011 would be ranamed 20111216 - 2113. I import them to my computer first and then move them to an external hard drive when the storage on my computer gets tight. For a while, I accidently was adding a space to the front of my file name, so it would import as " 20111216 - 2113" instead of "20111216 - 2113" notice the space at the beginning file name. This space was maintained when the file lived on my computer, but it was removed when I moved the lightroom folder to my external hard drive. As a result, all of the files that are on the external hard drive show up as "missing or deleted." Light room thinks there should be a space in the front, but none of the files on the hard drive do. I have to locate each and every file by hand, and the "find nearby photos" check box doesn't help, because all the files are missing the space. Is there a way to batch rename files in lightroom, even when the file is missing? I need to change all the names in my catalogue to take out the space at the front so I can then easily locate the files on my external hard drive. Can someone help me out? There has to be a better, faster, easier way to do this other than individually locating each and every file on my external hard drive.
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How do i open a raw file in lightroom

how do I open a raw file in lightroom?

Yes, those are good links, but let's clean up the terminology too so we're all talking the same language.
There is no "open" in Lightroom when referring to photos.
You can "import" photos into Lightroom ... this means that now Lightroom has registered the photo's location and other pertinent information into its database, but it does not store the photo itself in the Lightroom database (or anywhere else in Lightroom), so Lightroom never contains your photos; the photo continues to be stored on one of your hard drives, wherever you want it to be, and the file is visible in your operating system.
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Trouble renaming files after a 'small' import error

I mostly photograph people and I name my files with the convention: date-person-photo number. I'm using LR3.3 at the moment.
I recently did 2 shoots in quick succession and made the mistake of naming the second set of photos with the name of the person from the first shoot. I didn't realise my mistake until I'd finished editing the photos. So, for example, I now have photos with several virtual copies and a couple of .tiffs from trips to photoshop but the wrong person's name is attached to them.
(In some ways, it's not a big deal since the client will never see the file names but it will be a nuisance for me later if I have to go searching for these photos...)
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Thanks.

Something quite curious just happened, i started without my drivers/utillitys nor steam, started regular programs one by one slowly over time to notice any differnce while doing work and saving every now and then, now at the time i had Teamspeak, Texview 2 (a texture viewer for games), Skype, Nvidea drivers, firefox and adobe updater and CS6 Services.
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Hi Mike
Thanks for your response.
Actually this is my first time working with the file based system. XDCAM. Usually the guys give me a single video file for footage and use it just it straight up.
But since I was given an XDCAM I did a search and came across this post. So being my first time not sure how helpful I can be but let me give you my current workflow so maybe this can help answer your question above.
I don't work with producers or directors I work with the end user or "viewer" as the case may be. So they are not technical and I can not tell them to get a copy of prelude and mark it up for me.
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When I place my CF card into the reader PSE opens and displays all the photos on the card the problem is they are out of order. I take volleyball photos and use the burst often The files are numbered properly by the camera but PSE seems to get them mixed up. When I import and renamer them PSE thakes them in the order they are shown and they are then renumbered out of order causind many shots to be out of order. I have never had this problem before. I have been using PSE 6 up thru 10 now and this is the first time I have had this happen. Last season I wasusing PSE9 and all my bursts sequences are in purfect order.
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Hi,
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name> rename> and all seems to be OK. My question is I never had this
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Two-part question:
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Suggestions, there may be better ways!
Q1. Select one or more images, Press F2
If [Date - Filename] pulls in the wrong date, create a Custom rename such as [Custom Name - Filename] and type the date as the "Custom Name" in your wanted format yyyymmdd.
Q2. Create folders with required dates (Right-click on a 'Master' YYYY folder), Drag images with corresponding date to its folder.

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Gosh, there were two replies to this topic, one disappeared. I imagine I know what's going on there.
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PSE-5 crapped out on me at about 330,000! As the image count increases, the time between the necessity to run, "catalog > recover" decreases dramatically, and at a certain point, the catalog becomes unrecoverable. I confess to not knowing if this is dependent on image count, total size in GB of image files, or size of the catalog and and thumb DB files themselves.
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Gosh, there were two replies to this topic, one disappeared. I imagine I know what's going on there.
In any event, thanks to both of you for the answers and links. I bought Lightroom in the hope that its import and thumbnail generation speed will be superior to that of PSE-7 when confronted with high image count catalogs.
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So, I grabbed Lightroom 4 while I could still get the DVD version. As I'm sure you already know, Adobe is planning to discontinue DVDs of CS product sometime in April, this year.
I expect this is part of Adobe's inexorable march toward subscription only software. Something to look forward to, eh? Another monthly bill in addition to Cable, electric, 3 or 4 phone bills, etc......
Thanks again.

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