[bbales]

OK, I'm finally getting around to playing with Automator. I keep thinking this would be great for renaming large numbers of photos. So I'm trying to do just that. I selected my last import in iphoto and tried to get it to name them "prom1, prom 2," etc. I tried several times -- but the photos seemingly stubbornly remained "PN60188," etc. But I finally used spotlight to search -- and WITHIN nested folders, there are my renamed prom photos. But I want them to be renamed in iphoto itslef.

So -- anyone know what I'm doing wrong? Would it be better to rename them BEFORE importing to iphoto? Would the new names show up? This seems kind of unintuitive to me, I must say.

[step]

THAT, my friend is the whole problem with this iphoto/spotlight database fudge.
if you file manage by any app other than the finder, or mess with pictures in the iphoto library with any app other than iphoto, then you don't update the database at the same time so it loses track -gahhh!

ahem..sorry, pet peeve

but you can do sequential renames inside iphoto from the batch option

[step]

Originally Posted by step

but you can do sequential renames inside iphoto from the batch option

but of course if you email the photo (even using the iphoto button) it'll still have the old name 'cause iphoto only renames the file in it's database not the actual file....

[bbales]

Originally Posted by step

THAT, my friend is the whole problem with this iphoto/spotlight database fudge.
if you file manage by any app other than the finder, or mess with pictures in the iphoto library with any app other than iphoto, then you don't update the database at the same time so it loses track -gahhh!

ahem..sorry, pet peeve

but you can do sequential renames inside iphoto from the batch option

You know, I was so excited for tiger to come out. I thought I'd be able to do this batch renaming, with automator. (This would be one of the most useful workflows, right now for me.) I thought I'd be able to manage my mail at desktop and laptop with Mail and smart folders, including sent mail. And I thought some other things besides. I thought Spotlight would be great and it's hmmm.... less useful than I'd anticipated.

I'm a little peeved right now.

[step]

same here, i was going to tag all my ref photo's (billions of 'em) with spotlight comments for easy finding, luckyl y i found out how fragile those spotlight comments really are before i wasted a few days on it - write them to a dvd and "poof"
i've more hopes for automator though, it'll improve as more actions are added by apple and other 3rd parties, but spotlight has been a big let down for me.