How to Use iPhoto’s Batch Change feature

Updated December 1st, 2015.

This is another one for Dad, but I’ll bet it helps a zillion other people too.

Sometimes in iPhoto you want to change the names of a whole bunch of photos. For example, you might want to number them sequentially, with a prefix indicating the name of the album they’re in. That’s a great idea: a name like “Texas Barbeque Contest-001” is a lot more descriptive than “IMG_001.jpg” but who wants to do the work of renaming more than a couple of photos by hand? No one, that’s who. That’s why iPhoto has a Batch Change feature.

Here’s an example.

A few weeks ago I had the bright idea of weighing myself more or less daily and using my iPhone to take a photo of the readout on the scale. Thanks to Photo Stream the pictures magically appear on my iMac, where I put them into an album. Here’s how it looked a few days ago. Yes those are my toes.
iPhoto_batch_before
Nice collection of photos but the names are not helpful at all. I wondered whether I could rename them to reflect the date that the pictures were taken (and of course the photos know when they were taken because the iPhone stamps that information into every photo it takes). Turns out it was easy. First, I selected all of the photos in the album. Then I went to the Photos menu and chose “Batch Change…”, like so:

iPhoto_batch_menu
That led to a box, which I configured as shown below.

iPhoto_batch_change_dialog

Then I clicked OK and that was it. Here’s the result. So much better!

iPhoto_batch_after
Very powerful stuff and it only takes a minute. You should try it.

Copyright 2008-2024 Christian Boyce. All rights reserved.

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Christian Boyce

Christian Boyce is a Mac and iPhone expert with over 30 years' experience in the field. His specialty is teaching people how to get more out of their Macs and iPhones using the software and apps already installed. He is the author of several books, a guest speaker for Mac and iPhone user groups worldwide, and a former rocket scientist. He splits time between homes in Santa Monica, California and Round Rock, Texas.

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