Small annoyance I’ve run into: Having 2 photo cameras on a field trip, taking pictures in parallel with them, needing to put pictures in a chronological order (scenario is applicable, for example, in case you go on a trip with some friends and everybody takes pictures using personal camera. You want to create a web gallery with pictures for everyone to look at).

So you have pictures from 2 or more cameras and need to order them.

Solution is pretty straightforward if you’re not afraid to use a command prompt:

Step 1) Download exiftool from here: http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Step 2) Copy all photos in a folder (if you have name collisions just rename some of files – in the end they will have a time stamp as a file name so it doesn’t really matter)

Step 3) Copy exiftool.exe to the same folder

Step 4) Open a command prompt in the folder and issue the following command:

exiftool “-FileName<CreateDate” -d %%Y%%m%%d_%%H%%M%%S%%%%-c.%%%%e *.JPG

The rest is magic Files are renamed based on the file date/time inside the exif tag associated with each of the pictures. Now by sorting on the file name you can have the pictures in the order that they were taken.

Related posts:

1. Watermarking your photos, the free way
2. Pictures from the Grand Canyon Trip :)
3. Great Abandonware