In photos for MacOS, how can I sort the photos by day AND time? Many photos from one day, want to have them sorted by time as well. Time-stamps in the Meta-data are all correct, however photos only sorts by day and within the day in random order.
iMac 27″
A good way to troubleshoot incorrect sorting is to check the time metadata with the following exiftool command:
exiftool -a -G1 -s -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -Time:All -api RequestAll=2 image.jpg
Or to check all location metadata:
exiftool -a -G1 -s -n -ee -Location:All image.jpg
Or to check other metadata as well:
exiftool -a -G1 -s image.jpg
exiftool works best via the Terminal:
The link at the bottom has more info about installing and using exiftool.
There are some online tools that can also use exiftool to display the tags but none of those seem to display just the time info at a glance and they are not practical for large movie files. Below is one such web site but I'd recommend using exiftool via the Terminal instead:
GraphicConverter has exiftool built-in and it can also be used to easily display the metadata tags.
https://www.lemkesoft.de/en/products/graphicconverter/
The date of image files (.jpg and many others) should be in 'ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal'.
But sometimes some apps get it wrong even if that most important date is correct. For example, I have had to fix the following errors that caused incorrect sorting in some Photos versions:
1. 'ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal' was missing so the 'MacOS:FileCreateDate' or some other tag was used instead.
2. Mojave Photos.app 4.0, Catalina Photos.app 5.0 and Google photos show the time as 0.00.00 although it is correctly in 'ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal'. The date is displayed and sorted correctly but such images are incorrectly sorted at midnight. Root of the problem was that 'IPTC:DateCreated' was present but 'IPTC:TimeCreated' was not or missing time in 'XMP-photoshop:DateCreated' if 'IPTCDigest is not current'.
3. GPS data and timezones and DST can mangle sorting. I had some vacation images abroad where Photos.app 4.0 displays the correct time but sorts incorrectly images that happen to have 'GPS:GPSTimeStamp' tag. That tag can be adjusted or deleted because it is not so important.
BTW, older iOS devices had 'GPS:GPSDateStamp and 'GPS:GPSTimeStamp' but in later iOS (after about iOS 13.2.2) the latter does not exist anymore and there is 'ExifIFD:OffsetTime*' instead. Some apps get confused about this.
4. It seems that in addition to a different timezone, the occasional 'GPS:GPSTimeStamp' or even if its seconds happen to have decimals between 59.996 to 59.999 (!) can cause incorrect sorting in macOS 11 Big Sur Photos.app (seems to be fixed in macOS 11.6.7 Big Sur):
https://medium.com/@lowply/how-to-fix-a-gps-time-stamp-bug-8d8d7584e004
https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/77973/when-exactly-is-gpstimestamp
Photos grabs the date when importing so I re-import the files after fixing their metadata.
The dates in movies is another thing:
Movie dates and Photos.app - Apple Community
You are right-- problems like that are often time zone inconsistencies. The problem for Apple would be keeping up with all the different systems that are used. I've seen time zones "set correctly" but which end up different on different cameras, or after importing to different photo viewing systems.
Where in Photos are you seeing this odd behavior?
In an Album, you can sort by Title or Time
The time sorting is based on something like the number of seconds since the Big Bang, and it doesn't mix up times in a day. Other windows may be different-- Recents is sorted by Import time, for instance.
The sorting is impacted by time zones and Camera date settings, of course.
I don't want to make it too complicated, so here are a few examples. First 2 pictures of my album, both taken with my iPhone 12 Pro.
First screenshot my settings for sorting.
Second screenshot shows Okt. 12th, 19:21 as the FIRST picture of the album.
Third screenshot shows Okt. 12th, 16:47 as the SECOND picture of the album.
Both time-stamps are correct, the flight picture was really taken around 3 hours earlier when we approached Yakarta. Second picture shows us after we arrived at the airport hotel.
Should be the other way round.
One more information: Adobe Bridge and Adobe Lightroom show all pictures in the correct order.
Have all photos for one day be imported from the same camera? Have the photos been taken in the same timezone?
If you have been in a different timezone, when you imported the photos, you may want to check, if Photos has assigned the correct timezone, when the photos have been imported. You can see the timezone for each photo, if you select the photo and then open the dialogue "Image > Adjust Date and Time". There you can see the timezone and the closest city assigned to the image and correct it, if a photo has a different timezone assigned as the other photos taken at the same time.
Photos were taken with different cameras (2 iPhones, 1 Canon EOS-7). Timezones were set correctly, time in the Meta-data show correct time. Sorting is correct for days, but within the day it is completely random (e.g. 14:07 showing before 10:44, etc.).
Same problem both in Library and Album.
But is there a correlation between the times and the cameras? Is one camera's pictures always later? Which ones are right? Sometimes setting the time zone the same doesn't mean they are stored the in the same way. I've had real issues with time zones. Something is different about the times...
Found out a little more: Seems that Photos does NOT respect the timezone-setting of my Canon and my wife's iPhone 13 mini. It does respect the setting of my iPhone 12 Pro though. Times are all correct, but these 2 devices show middle european time as timezone, even though the settings in the cameras are correct.
Thanks, Matti! However, that is way too complicated to apply on 600 photos from just 1 trip ...
I think I found the source of the problem: My iPhone was set to save the GeoData, my wife's iPhone did not. My Canon does not have these data available since it does not have GPS built-in, although the timezone was correctly set in the preferences. Therefore in all photos taken with these devices, Apple Photo-App set the timezone to middle-european-time and completely ignores the (correct) time or cannot read the timezone-settings of my Canon.
This would also explain the wrong date/time of the first photos both taken with my iPhone, because on the plane it cannot save the GeoData.
This is something Apple really needs to fix! Any idea where I can file a report to Apple?
When Photos is importing your photos from a device, it tries to make an educated guess of the timezone the camera has been set to, when the picture has been taken. The timezone in the camera may already have been changed back to a different timezone, when you import the photos from your camera.
Photos is guessing the timezone based on the GPS tags assigned to the photos, and if the GPS is missing, Photos will use the the timezone of your system time, when you import the photos to your Mac.
This way you may get different timezones to photos taken at the same time with the same camera, if one of the Photos has been tagged with GPS and the other not, or if you import them to your Mac while your Mac is in different timezones, at home or on the road. It would be much easier, if Photos would allow us to specify the timezone the camera has been set to, when we import the photos. The Photos would not have to guess.
Thanks, Leonie!
However, it seems that Photos relies ONLY on the GPS-tags and completely ignores the timeszone that is specified in the EXIF-data. My wife‘s iPhone did automatically adjust to the timezone (I checked, that was correct), only the option to save geodata in the pictures was not active. So: she DID have correct timezone but DID NOT have GPS-data saved in the Metadata. And Photo-App completely messed it up 😖. Another weird fact: After I imported her photos all information about timezones were lost, showed only middle-european time there 😖. So obviously the camera-app does not save timezone-data but only GPS-data.
And: why can Adobe correctly interpret date and time and Apple cannot?
Anybody?
Well, Adobe can do it correctly, Apple not 😏
Sort by day AND time?
