In 99.99% of cases there shouldn't be any reason why Photo Naminator wouldn't simply just do what it was built for. But "shouldn't" doesn't mean
there can't be other cases. Here's a few common problems that may occur:
Basics
Photo Naminator reads photo files (and folders recursively) as input, loads their associated metadata (EXIF and TIFF dictionaries),
constructs a new name for each file based on a name pattern you provide and merging metadata information into it, then copys the
input files to an output folder changing their name accordingly. If any of this fails, it may be due to some basic issues:
- Insufficient disk space for copying the files: Make sure you haven't run out of disk space. If you did, check whether you can
move to a different drive or wether you can delete some files not needed anymore. Then try again.
- Can't load input files: Make sure you have the access rights to the files in the folder you selected as input folder. If you
can't access those files for viewing them, Photo Naminator can't read them either.
- Unsupported metadata formats: Not all photo files are created equal. Some may be lacking metadata information which therefore results in Photo Naminator not being able to load the according information. Displaying the available metadata in Finder for such files may hint at a general problem with the photo file rather than a Photo Naminator bug. Not saying there can't be any bugs with Photo Naminator though.
Photo Naminator as of v1.38 makes use of the ExifTool open source project and given the project's amazingly broad support of photo and video file formats, stumbling over unsupported metadata information seems quite unlikely.
- A photo's or video's creation timestamp seems to be off: Even though EXIF as a format is reasonably standardized, not all cameras or apps use it in exactly this way. Timestamp information – including timezone information and milli/micro-second information – may be found in non-standard or vendor specific metadata properties of your photo or video file. In most cases, things should be just fine, but there may be exceptions to this rule. So in cas you get the impression that something looks weird with the timestamps of your photos or videos, please do the following:
- On the Settings section, make sure that the option Use a photo's file creation date... is disabled (deselected). We want to make sure that we don't accidentially see the file system timestamp to be used as a fallback if the real photo or video creation timestamp can't be properly derived from the file. Once we know what's going on and have been able to resolve it, you may enable this property again.
- Make sure you are using the placeholder <DateTimeOriginal> (or <DateTimeDigitized>) in your (custom) name pattern; do not use any other timestamp as Photo Naminator may not properly detect other placeholders as being the respective photo or video creation (or digitization) timestamp.
- When using a formatter with the placeholder <DateTimeOriginal> (or <DateTimeDigitized>), check that you've used the proper letters and capitalization to make sure you're referring to the right data! Using <DateTimeOriginal(yyyy-mm-dd)> may result in the incorrect date '2022-47-18' as 'mm' refers to the minutes of the time when the photo was taken not the month (which is capital 'MM'). Please read the How to define names for photo files? section of this website for correct formatters for timestamps.
- Check your photo's or video's metadata properties and validate which property actually holds the correct photo creation date. Please also check in which property the sub-second information is stored (default should be <SubSecTimeOriginal> (or <SubSecTimeDigitized> respectively) as well as the timezone offset information (default should be <OffsetTimeOriginal> (or <OffsetTimeDigitized> respectively).
If no sub-second information can be retrieved for a photo or video, Photo Naminator will take zero as a fallback. If no timezone information can be retrieved for a photo or video, Photo Naminator will take your Mac's current timezone based on the System time/date settings.
- In case the above step reveal that the information is stored in different fields than the default properties, go to Photo Naminator's Settings section and check whether the properties used in your photos or videos, are already in the list of alternative properties listed in the Camera Model section with the respective default property. If it's not there yet, add your properties' names at the end of the respective lines after a comma. See Configuring Photo Naminator for more details. Don't forget to reload your input files after any changes made so that they take effect.
- If the time or date seems to be off, you may want to check if the timezone information is properly read (please proceed as described above in that case). What may also be the case is that you have accidentially enabled the Normalize all timestamps to timezone [timezone id] settings option on the Settings section. This may result in Photo Naminator shifting the time information from the timestamp's original timezone (e.g. GMT-8) to whatever you have selected here. Let's assume for a moment that you have the option enabled and selected timezone GMT+1 (=CET), but your photo carries information telling that is was shot at 9am (09:00) in Los Angelos (GMT-8 or PST): then Photo Naminator will translate the timestamp to the corresponding point in time in GMT+1 timezone, i.e. add 9 hours to it. So your photo's timestamp will not read as '... 09:03:47 -0800' anymore, but '... 18:03:47 +0100' instead. Could that be the reason for the time or date seemingly being off in your case?
- If none of the above is helping or seems to be the case, please reach out to me via Photo Naminator's Help/Support menu item, sending me an email so we can look into the issue. Thanks a lot for your support!
Checking or changing default settings
If Photo Naminator makes you scratch your head over some weird renaming behaviour, make sure you have set the right settings for the renaming. To do so, select the Settings sheet on the navigation bar at the top of the Photo Naminator window. This will open the Settings section of Photo Naminator. Check if a selection of a certain option provides hints to what might cause the unexpected behaviour. Please also read more about the individual settings in the Configuring Photo Naminator section of this website.
Crashes
In the hopefully extremely unlikely case of a crash of Photo Naminator, please get in touch with the author (see below).
Thanks a lot and apologies for the inconvenience caused!
If all else fails...
If you've tried all of the above options without success, there's two possible options left:
- Contact the author of Photo Naminator via Photo Naminator's Help/Support menu or directly via email at mailto:'Björn Goerke' and provide an understandable description of the problem you're experiencing. Perhaps there's a bug in Photo Naminator that can be fixed or a workaround that may help. No guarantee. No promises.
- Try a different renaming tool that may work in your situation. Sorry for disappointing with Photo Naminator.
