Camera files arrive with names that tell you nothing: DSC_0491, IMG_2276, a different scheme from every body on the shoot. Renaming them by hand is slow and easy to get wrong — a job that can swallow an afternoon for a couple of hundred frames. Archyv reads the metadata your camera already wrote into each file and builds the names for you, so a whole shoot lands in one consistent convention in minutes.

Decide the convention once

Names are built from a template — a pattern of the fields you care about, like the photographer, the date, the camera, or the location, followed by a sequence number. Build it once and reuse it on every shoot. A pattern such as {artist}-{yyyy}-{seq:4} produces names like Rivera-2026-0001, numbered in order and consistent across the set.

You create and save patterns on the Filename Templates tab, then apply them from the Metadata Renaming process. Saving a template per project turns the next shoot into a single choice instead of a fresh setup.

Handle the messy files

Real shoots have gaps — a frame missing its location, a mix of cameras and photographers in one folder. Templates take that in stride: numbering restarts cleanly for each group, and you decide what happens when a field is missing (skip the file, drop in a placeholder, or be prompted to fill it in). A single run can tidy files from several cameras at once. The Metadata Renaming reference walks through each option.

See it first, undo it after

You stay in control the whole way. Turn on Simulation Mode in Settings and Archyv dry-runs the rename into the log, so you can read every old-to-new name before anything changes on disk. And because every change is reversible, you can review your change history and undo a run afterwards, for a retention period you control. Renaming only ever touches a file’s name — the photo inside is left exactly as it was, so the image itself is never at risk.

Full reference

Metadata Renaming — how the process works, step by step
Filename Templates — build and save reusable patterns