Renaming strategies on import from Canon/CF card on Mac

[muzz]

I've recently tried to "clean up my act" and am trying to organise and future-proof my image collection/storage strategy. I have a new 750GB external drive and decided on a folder hierarchy of Year/Month/Shooting Date. After reading DaveB's blog post on naming things I decided to use a similar image file naming method. I use Aperture and don't own Lightroom. Aperture can do the renaming but I found the naming choices a bit restrictive. I have just bought a Canon 7D and found that the EOS Utility software gave a very flexible method of naming files on import from the camera to the HD and so I started using that method. However the big files were pretty slow and with the camera attached and using batteries while doing it I decided to go for a card reader approach. Unfortunately the EOS Utility only works when the camera is attached and doesn't recognise the card used in a reader. The alternative Canon Memory Card Utility which is accessed from the Canon Image Browser software doesn't have the same flexibilty of naming.

I now have a variety of options (stick to using the camera via USB, use a less ideal naming strategy via the Canon MCU, or use Aperture), none of which is ideal as far as maintaining the uniform naming method that I have started.

I wondered what other Mac users were doing if renaming is part of their workflow. I have seen a bit of software called A Better Finder Rename which looks like it might do the job - it can access image file EXIF details to include in the name.

Has anyone approached this problem and found a happy solution? Any advice would be appreciated.

Cheers, Muzz