Name every file before the client sees it

Camera names like DSC_8392.CR2 tell a client nothing about what is inside. A clear name — job, date, sequence — lets them search their drive and find a favorite shot months later, instead of scrolling a wall of numbers.

Renaming never touches the image: it changes the label on the outside of the file, not a single byte of the photo. shoots.page stores originals byte-for-byte, so the files you name are exactly the files that arrive.

A dependable pattern combines the client or job name, the shoot date and a sequence number, joined by underscores: smith-wedding_2026-09-15_001.jpg. Zero-padding keeps files in correct order everywhere — 001 to 010 sorts properly instead of dropping 10 right after 1. Photo filenames on shoots.page can be up to 255 characters.

Stick to lowercase letters, digits, hyphens and underscores. Spaces and special characters can cause trouble in some tools and on some systems. More background in the full naming guide.

The planner does not rename files itself. Download the worksheet to get a plain-text mapping of placeholder old names to your planned new names, and use it alongside whatever batch-renaming tool you already have on your desktop.

The .jpg extension in the preview and worksheet is a placeholder. When you apply the names, keep each file's real extension so your system keeps reading RAW files and JPEGs properly.