How to Batch Rename Photos in Lightroom Classic – Day 29

Batch Rename Photos Once and the Whole Shoot Makes Sense

Twenty-eight days of this series have treated Lightroom as an editing program. Today we use it as something else entirely: a file management tool. Two jobs in particular — batch renaming photos on your hard drive, and finding a specific image buried somewhere in a folder structure you cannot remember.

Neither involves editing a single slider. You do not even have to keep the photos in your catalog afterwards. Lightroom is simply better at both of these things than your operating system’s file browser is, and it is worth knowing even if you edit somewhere else.

Batch Renaming Photos on Your Computer

Files straight off a camera are named things like DSC_5093.jpg. That is fine while they sit on a card and useless the moment you need to find or deliver them. Lightroom will rename an entire shoot in one pass, and the renamed files are the real files on your drive — this is not a catalog-only label.

1. Import the folder

   Bring the images into Lightroom. Add is enough — you are not copying or moving anything.

2. Select everything

   In the Library module, select all the photos you want renamed.

3. Open Rename Photos

   Library > Rename Photos, or press F2.

4. Pick or build a naming scheme

   The dropdown offers Custom Name, Custom Name — Sequence, Custom Name (X of Y), Date and Filename among others.

5. Click OK

   Lightroom renames every selected file on disk and confirms how many it changed.

Building Your Own Naming Recipe

The presets are fine, but the Filename Template Editor is where this gets genuinely useful. Choose Edit from the bottom of the naming dropdown to open it.

1. Clear the field

   Delete whatever template is in there and start from an empty line.

2. Type your text directly

   Anything you type becomes part of every filename. For a trip to Greece, type greece and then a hyphen.

3. Insert a sequence

   Pick Sequence # from the Numbering section — the four-digit version gives you 0001, which sorts correctly however many photos you end up with.

4. Click Done and OK

   Every file becomes greece-0001.jpg, greece-0002.jpg and so on.

You are not stuck with your first choice. Select the same photos, press F2 again, and rename them a second time with a different scheme. Switching to Custom Name (X of Y), for instance, gives you greece-1 of 15, which tells a client exactly how many images to expect.

Other tokens worth knowing: capture date, original filename, camera model, and any metadata field you have filled in. Combine them however your delivery convention needs.

Using Lightroom to Find a Photo You Have Lost

The second use case is the one that saves the most time. Everyone has a project folder with thirty subfolders inside it, each with its own subfolders, and somewhere in there is the one photograph you need. Clicking through that in Finder or Explorer, folder by folder, squinting at thumbnails, is miserable.

Lightroom turns the whole tree into a single visual grid.

1. Start with a clean catalog

   Right-click any folders currently in your catalog and choose Remove. This does not delete anything from your drive — it just clears the view so what you import next is all you see.

2. Drag the whole folder tree in

   Select every top-level folder — shift-click from the first to the last — and drag them all into Lightroom at once. It reads every subfolder underneath.

3. Sort the import window by file type

   This is the trick that makes it manageable. Sorting by file type groups all the JPEGs, all the RAW files, all the TIFFs and all the videos together.

4. Uncheck what you don’t need

   Shift-click the block of MP4s and untick them. No point importing hours of video when you are looking for a still.

5. Click Import

   Use Add rather than Copy — nothing moves on your drive. Lightroom will also flag any files that appear damaged, which is useful information in its own right.

Now every image across every subfolder is in one grid. Press Tab to hide the side panels and give the thumbnails the full window, scroll until you spot the shot, and click it — Lightroom tells you exactly which folder it came from.

Then Clean Up After Yourself

Once you have found the file, you probably do not want several thousand unrelated images cluttering your catalog forever. Select the folders, right-click, and choose Remove.

Again, this removes them from the catalog only. Every file stays exactly where it was on your drive. Your catalog goes back to being clean, and you have the photograph you were looking for.

Treating Lightroom as a temporary lens onto your file system — import, look, remove — is a completely legitimate way to use it, and it costs you nothing.

Why This Beats Your File Browser

• Everything in one grid. No clicking in and out of folders — the whole tree renders as one scrollable set of thumbnails.
• Real previews. Lightroom renders RAW files properly, including layered TIFFs and PSDs that most file browsers show as generic icons.
• Filter as you go. Sort and filter by file type, capture date, camera, lens or rating before you import a single thing.
• Renaming that sticks. Changes apply to the actual files, not to a database entry.
• Nothing is moved. Add rather than Copy means your folder structure is never touched.

Quick Reference: Keys, Menus and Settings

• Bring the files inDrag the folder into Lightroom, choose Add (not Copy), Import
• Select everythingCmd/Ctrl + A
• RenameF2 or Library > Rename Photos
• Build a recipeFile Naming > Edit: Custom Text or typed text, a hyphen, Sequence, then Done
• Search a folder treeDrag in every folder, Include Subfolders, sort by file type, uncheck the MP4s
• Browse and locateTab hides the panels; right-click > Show in Finder
• Clean upFolders panel, right-click > Remove (files stay on your drive)