Having good naming schemes for documents makes a lot of sense, particularly images, which still can’t be searched easily other than by name.
Having searchable and sortable naming schemes for documents makes a lot of sense, particularly images, which still can’t be searched easily other than by name. Finding an old photo can be a real chore if it wasn’t named smartly.
I don’t think it helps much to put ‘image’ or ‘photo’ in the filename of an image – just stick them all in a folder where only images live, and it’s job done. If the date is important, and the metadata for that might not be right, now or in the future, (because the photo wasn’t saved on the key date, or the file can be changed and the date updated), then it makes sense to have the key date in the naming scheme. And as I’m sure we all know, a sortable date needs to be of the format 2024-11-08 or even 20241108.
The keywords in the filename are probably more important though, and I see no reason not to be extravagant in their use. We might start with a grouping like the product name, then some sort of subgrouping to describe the shots, then a numbering system to separate them. But we can still add notes to help with searching in the future, so we might end up with something like:
blue widget - in situ at red sprocket company - 104 - landscape used on website
Sure, we could keep the images in an ‘in situ at red sprocket company’ folder inside a ‘blue widget images’ folder, but even if we do, the files can still go walkabout and will benefit from a name that stands alone.
I prefer a numbering system which has sufficient digits to cope with all eventualities, and which starts at 10 or 100 or whatever, avoiding any possibility of leading zeroes being truncated.
There are plenty of good articles on this subject online, and everyone will have their own preferences, so these are just ideas. But having a system in place can be a lifesaver. Windows and Mac OS both have surprisingly sophisticated tools for batch-renaming files, and adding sequential numbering, making it quicker and easier than most people think to update and improve the filenames in an existing library.