File name character limit

Report · Nov 08, 2017

I'm currently using Elements 14, which seems to have a 30 character file name character limit. Is there any way to increase this? Or is there a newer version that has a longer character limit? Thanks.

Report · Nov 09, 2017

EmeraldCity14 wrote
I'm currently using Elements 14, which seems to have a 30 character file name character limit. Is there any way to increase this? Or is there a newer version that has a longer character limit? Thanks.

A quick test with the current 2018 version (Windows) shows that longer file names are supported. I am not sure if all the organizer features do support long file names. The old complaints were also about the automatic naming scheme of the downloader. I would advise testing with a trial version.

I dont like file renaming because I don't need it, the catalogs have anything to search and find by tags, bits (substrings) of captions and notes, dates... Files with the same file name are supported, they are not duplicates (not same size in kb or date_taken).

Report · Nov 12, 2017

Thank you, I may test the trial version as suggested.

I've never really used longer file names, either, but then I read a post on a genealogy forum or somewhere that suggested it might be a good idea because whoever ends up the photo files after I'm gone may not use Photoshop and thus wouldn't know the details about the photos if they were just to take them off my computer. So I'm thinking about adding longer file names.

Report · Nov 13, 2017

EmeraldCity14 wrote
Thank you, I may test the trial version as suggested.
I've never really used longer file names, either, but then I read a post on a genealogy forum or somewhere that suggested it might be a good idea because whoever ends up the photo files after I'm gone may not use Photoshop and thus wouldn't know the details about the photos if they were just to take them off my computer. So I'm thinking about adding longer file names.

For your purpose, I am quite sure you can rename your files with longer names. What I have not yet tested is if the option in the downloader to rename at import works with long name; however that's not what you want to do for genealogy.

Rather than renaming the files at import, you rename them after import according to their contents.

Anyway, in genealogy, adding CAPTIONS (as long as you wish) is the necessary way to document your files so that everybody with every viewing or editing software can see it. And of course, adding tags about persons, places, events... That info is stored by default in the catalog, but you can 'write metadata to files' so that it's available to everybody. Renaming is redundant and can't hold enough description of the contents of the image.