How to name product images

Best way to name widget images.

[is300]

My general product name is widgets.

These will be some of my categories:
Movie widgets - Celebrity widgets - Animal widgets, etc...

Within each category, such as the Animal Widgets category, I will feature products whos image filename could either be named:

Animal_Widgets_001.jpg
or
Animal_001.jpg

My question is, what is the smarter way to name my product images? I'm planning on having over 1000 products, and I'm not sure if it's wise to have my main keyword in each name.

It's important to note that my site will have the term widgets all over it, within anchor text backlinks, title tags, etc. Would it be overdoing it to have my main keyword within the thumbnail and fullsize image filename?

[celenoid]

Better yet, have your Animal_001.jpg thumbnail link to Animal_Widgets_001.jpg

?

Don't think you'll know for sure unless you test it out :)

[kaled]

I think I'd be inclined to use multiple directories when handling large numbers of images. If you want to rename them later it will probably be much easier to do so.

Kaled.

[DerekH]

I'd imagine Googleguy's hint that hyphens are preferable to underscores would apply here too.

In terms of naming image files, it really depends on what you are trying to achieve.
For example, on one of my sites, each name begins abcdef-...
where ab is the year, cd the month, and ef the day that the image applies too.
I would think that the most important criterion for a naming convention is that you can keep track of your own image collection.
Regards
DerekH

[sem4u]

On one site I use the product code as the filename. On other sites I use hypens to separate keywords (mainly so that they are easier to read). I also try and categorise them into folders.