KRename is a Linux Photographer’s Best Friend

Or – at least – a really great tool to use.

If you are anything more than a casual Linux-based photographer you know that Linux provides its own set of challenges when dealing with your pictures.

Although all photographers don’t do this, I like to rename my pictures as soon as I have downloaded them to my hard drive.  Although some people simply manage their pictures through keywords, metadata, or IPTC standards, I still prefer picture names that give me a little idea of what they contain.  Who wouldn’t prefer “Puppy_first_birthday_22Apr2010_001.jpg” to “DSC1097.jpg“?  Now I don’t need specialized photo software to know what I’m looking at.

If I were really good in Linux I would have written myself a nice script to rename the files from one version to another.  I’m not that good.  But I did find a tool that works great!  KRename.  I’ve attached a couple screenshots of the program.

First, here is what you see when you start up the program – Just drag and drop:

KRename on opening

There are several options for what you can do with your files:

What you can do with KRename

Finally – you can figure out the new names for your files – including incrementing numbers!

Renaming your Files

I did a little looking, and KRename looks like it is in the Ubuntu, Debian, and Fedora repositories.  If you can’t find it, you can go to http://www.krename.net to get the latest version. I have probably renamed over 2000 files with this program (about 20 at a time) – and never had a problem.  I highly recommend it!

Goodluck with your pictures 🙂