PC help: Lost extensions

Q I have downloaded Flash Renamer and used it to rename some pictures.

It appeared to work perfectly well, but now I can’t now see the thumbnail pictures of the renamed photographs in their folders. Neither will the photos open in Photoshop Elements, as it says they are the wrong type of file.
Graham Smith

A It looks like when you renamed the files, the computer lost their file extensions.

These extensions are the three or four letters that appear at the end of a file name, preceded by a dot, which tell the PC what type a particular file is.

Annoyingly, Windows doesn’t display these by default. To see them, open My Computer and click on the Tools menu, then on Folder Options. Click on the View tab and remove the tick from the box marked ‘Hide extensions for known file types’, then click on OK.

You will see that most digital images have the extension .jpg or .jpeg, which refer to the compressed Jpeg format for image files.

In Flash Renamer, the pane on the right will show what the selected files will look like once the program has finished with them. Make sure that when you make your changes and rename files, the names on the right retain the extension.

That way, Photoshop Elements and other programs that rely on extensions to know what type of file they’re dealing with will recognise your images without a problem.