Meaningful Filenames for Pictures:

A Naming Convention for Scanned Images

by James P. Terry

For more information related to this topic, please visit our Online Store for the video Digital Imaging For Genealogy by Richard S. Wilson.

Jim Terry wears several hats at Millennia Corporation... Technical Support, Webmaster and Newsgroup Administrator just to name a few. Jim also has professional genealogical research and teaching experience, plus a bachelor's degree in Communications with a photography emphasis and training in computer information systems.

You really need a systematic naming convention for the scanned pictures and document images that you add to your Legacy family files.  Such a convention will let you tell just by looking at a filename who it belongs to and what it's about. In addition, the system will use Windows' built-in sorting ability to group together all the pictures belonging to any given individual. This kind of system will make organizing and adding pictures to a family file a breeze. (For information on how manage picture folders in Legacy click here.)

If this family file is ever exported, the RIN number may change, but the User ID will always stay the same. Its uniqueness can quickly be checked with a Detailed Search. (To quickly assign User ID numbers to the thousands of individuals in my family file, I created an Update Query in Microsoft Access.)

When naming the image of Hugh Joseph Lyall, I called the file Lyal0339ind.jpg. I named the images of his marriage and death certificates and picture of his cemetery marker Lyal0339mar.tif, Lyal0339dea.tif and Lyal0339bur.jpg, respectively. 

The three letters following the User ID part the filename represent what the picture is about (the individual, or his/her marriage, death and burial events, etc.). If I had more than one picture of Hugh Joseph Lyall, they would be named Lyal0339ind1.jpg, Lyal0339ind2.jpg and so on. If he had married more than once, the scanned images of the marriages certificates would be called Lyal0339mar1.tif, Lyal0339mar2.tif and so on. The three-letter extension, of course, identifies the graphics file type (.jpg for JPEG; .tif for TIFF, etc.). Because 32-bit Legacy 7.0 allows long filenames, the user is not limited by the "8.3" naming limitations of the program's 16-bit predecessor. (The User ID naming convention can also be adapted for naming research folders and source documents.)

Exceptions...

There are always exceptions: For example a group photo of 83 people attending a family reunion, the picture of a family's children, or a large wedding party defy the particulars of this naming convention.  In these instances, you can still use the general principles described here, but drop the User ID numbers from the filenames.  Call that family reunion image QuinnReunion1985.gif; call the children's photo HarrisChildren.jpg; and name the wedding group picture Clarke-DunnWedding.gif.  This simple approach will still let you tell at a glance what the picture is about and use Windows' built-in sorting ability to logically list of images by like filenames.