3.3

Table Of Contents
Chapter 3 Importing Photos 61
The most conservative lenaming conventions provide the most cross-platform compatibility.
This means that your lenames will work in dierent operating systems, such as OS X and other
UNIX-based operating systems, and Windows. You also need to consider lenaming when you
transfer les over the Internet, where you can never be certain what computer platform your les
may be stored on, even if temporarily.
Avoid Example characters Reasons
File separators / (slash)
\ (backslash)
Some applications may not allow
you to use slashes in the names of
items. These characters are directory
separators for OS X and DOS
(Windows), respectively.
Special characters not included in
your native alphabet
¢™ These characters may not be
supported or may be dicult
to work with when exported to
other applications.
Punctuation marks, parentheses,
quotation marks, brackets, and
operators
. , [ ] { } ( ) ! ; “ ` * ? < > | These characters are often used
in scripting and programming
languages.
White space characters such
as spaces, tabs, new lines, and
carriage returns (the last two are
uncommon)
White space is handled dierently in
dierent programming languages
and operating systems, so certain
processing scripts and applications
may treat your les dierently than
expected. The most conservative
lenames avoid all use of white
space characters and use the
underscore (_) character instead.
Creating Custom Name Formats
In addition to the preset name formats, you can create custom name formats. To create a name
format, you select the name elements you want in the File Naming dialog. You can compose a
name format that combines the following name elements:
Version Name
Original File Name
Sequence Number (1 of 5, 2 of 5, 3 of 5, and so on)
Image Year
Image Month
Image Day
Image Date
Image Time
Index Number (1, 2, 3, and so on)
Custom Name
Counter (001, 002, 003, and so on)
Current Date
Current Time
Current Year
Current Month
Current Day