The last few days I have been sorting through all the pictures I've taken with my various iPhones over the years and decided to clean up and reorganize the files on my Windows 10 PC. There have been several times when a phone reset has reverted the filename count back to IMG_0001.JPG which has resulted in a lot of duplicates that end up with filenames like IMG_0001 (1).JPG and so on which is fine if they are sorted by date, but a mess when sorted by filename. In order to better organize the collection, I grouped together all the photos from my iPhone 6 Plus over the last year (just over 1000) and bulk renamed them all starting at 0001 for consistency. Then I found the fix which allowed me to set the next image number on my phone to pick up at the appropriate number, which worked perfectly. Then as a last step I deleted all the files from my iCloud photo library, cleaned it out completely including the trash, then re-uploaded the renamed files from my PC. Everything went smoothly and I saw them repopulate on the iPhone as well (I am using the optimize storage option). However when I checked my Photostream download folder, it appears the photos were coming back with the old filenames. To double check I downloaded a few and sure enough they came back out of the cloud with the old names. How is iCloud restoring their original filenames? Is it stored somewhere else within the photo, like exif information? I guess having the wrong filename in the cloud isn't a problem really but this is just nagging at my OCD. Very annoying!
