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I am importing images from a recent trip and find that the images are in a bizarre sort order. It is not by file number, nor is it by exposure date / time. I note that the Sort menu is locked into a single choice of preserving age, which is not happening in my case.
Is there a way to set the sort for images in a way that makes sense, eg file order or date / time order?
Cheers.
MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.15
How were the images created? If they have a capture date embedded in the Exif data, then they should be sorting by that. Were they created by different cameras with one of them having the date/time or timezone incorrect?
Can you check the date on some images that appear out of order by hitting CMD-i to bring up the info pane? Also check the time zone in image>adjust date and time
The Library view shows the pictures in file date order. If you put the pictures into albums, then you have more choices with the sorting order. You can, with the Info window, add a title and then sort by title to get any order you want. You can also, in an album, grab thumbnails and move them around to any order you like (but they may not stay that way unless you add titles.)
If the file date doesn't reflect the creation date you expect, you can change the date with Image>Adjust Date and Time. You can select a group of photos and change all of them by the same amount all at once. But sometimes it's best to do bulk changes to dates with 3rd party programs before you import them to Photos.
This screenshot shows the various sort option for the different views within a Photos library:
There is more to this problem than meets the eye.
My problem emerged with Shared albums, which I like to watch on my TV courtesy of Apple TV and iPhotos.
When you import an image from media, eg USB stick, the files come across with what appears as all their meta data, ie Title, Date and Time taken, Location etcetera. This results in images that are sorted primarily by date/time and secondarily by a Title which is the image numbering system of my three cameras.
The issue happens when you try to import those images into a Shared Album. The titles do not come across no matter which way you try to import them, vis
a) Drag the images en-masse from the source Library area
b) Copy your images from the Library into a more logical Album and then from there drag into the Shared Album, or
c) With the Shared Album open, click the blue "Add Photos and Videos" button and proceed with selecting and downloading.
What happens is whatever order you do the copying in, determines the end position of an image in the Shared Album. eg if you select and add a single image that may be at the beginning of your chronological journey, it ends up as the last image in your Shared Album.
I tried selecting all the desired images but 750 just conked out and did nothing.
Therefore, I am stuck with no clear solution. If only the metadata was imported into the Shared Albums I am sure would make a difference to the outcome.
I would suggest that this is a bug in the system and probably needs attention from Apple's engineers.
Cheer.
What you are describing is the expected behaviour of Shared Albums. Shared albums are not really albums, they are still the old Shared Photo Streams, introduced in Aperture in iPhoto with MacOS X 8 Mountain Lion. When Photos has been introduced, Apple changed the name to Shared Albums, but they they are still streams of photos for sharing photos safely, without giving away metadata, like dates and times, locations and reducing the size of the shared items, suitable for sharing considerately, without dumping large files onto the devices of the recipients. Shared Photo Streams have been introduced before we could have a chat about photos in the Messages on the iPhone. The Photo Streams have been a chat - drop a photo onto shared photo stream, add a comment, the recipient liked the photo, commented on it, dropped an own photo into the stream. The discussion about the photos has as important as the photos. So it made no sense to sort shared streams/ albums, as it would mess up the conversation. So the photos will always remain in the sequence we drop them into the shared album. Dropping several photos at once, will result in a random order.
Shared Albums remained to be streams until macOS 12. Since Monterey and iOS 12 we can sort shared albums automatically by the date, as Apple is no longer removing the dates.
Can you upgrade your Mac to macOS 12 Monterey? On Monterey the shared albums have been somewhat improved.
Dear Léonie,
Thank you for what is an excellent answer. That does explain it and now that I know, I can think about updating. You mentioned Monterey OS-X v12+. I am on Catalina 10.15.7. The fact that I am still noticing this means that it has not been changed, at least up to 10.15+
Cheers.
Yes, it has been the same for a very long time. I have been quite surprised, when I saw the possibility to sort Shared albums by date in Monterey and iOS 15. It is still possible in iOS 16.
Apple seems to be changing the shared albums to be easier to use as a web gallery, as there is no longer any other option to share albums on the web. And we do no longer need shared albums as a chat about photos - we can chat about our pictures using Messages.
In OS-X 10.15+ it's not actually a choice. The only option is "Keep sorted by oldest data added". There are no dates stored with these images. That is an executive decision made by Apple to deliberately downgrade the quality of data stored along with my images. I do not support it but have to live with it.
Just to do a humble job of assembling some holiday snaps and storing them in a particular order means the operator has to drag copy each and every image one at a time, wait for the image to ripple through the ether before it displays itself and repeat. A single image takes about ten minutes to display. That won't take more then a couple of days for a 500 snap collection.
Heaven forbid if you get one image out of place because of the random sorting in vogue, you will have to delete the shared album and start all over again.
What would be nice is to be able to drag re-sort individual images amongst the collection. That way total control is restored about sort order.
How can I regain a sensible sort order amongst my photos?
