Q: Photos out of chronological order in albums

In regular (non-"smart") albums, use View > Keep Sorted By Date to have the pictures displayed in "date-taken" order. Smart albums should already be displayed in that order.

Given your description of being unable to drag pictures into a different order suggests that you have "Keep Sorted" checked or defaulted, so your pictures should already be displayed in the order Photos thinks they were taken.

We are told that the version of Photos in OS X El Capitan (10.11), available in the fall, will have more sorting options. However, I'm wondering if your problem might be with how Photos is detecting the date taken.

my photos appear out of chronological order after import into albums.

Just to be sure, what do you mean by "Import into albums"?   You cannot import directly into albums, but import into the library, and the photos will be automatically split into moments. The moments appear chronologically in the Photos view.  When you create albums and add imported photos to albums, the albums can be arranged manually by dragging or are arranged by capture date.

This did not happen in iPhoto and no times/dates were altered from the original. This seems such a basic thing. Anyone know how to fix this?

If you are viewing regular albums and the photos are still sorted incorrectly, than check if your photos have been taken with different time zone settings.  When you import photos to Photos the timezone of your current system time will be used, which may be different from the timezone the camera has been set to. Photos that you do not import while still being in the same time zone will have an incorrect time stamp. And photos has a bug that makes it ignore time zone corrections applied in iPhoto or Aperture.

léonie wrote:

If you are viewing regular albums and the photos are still sorted incorrectly, than check if your photos have been taken with different time zone settings.  When you import photos to Photos the timezone of your current system time will be used, which may be different from the timezone the camera has been set to. Photos that you do not import while still being in the same time zone will have an incorrect time stamp. And photos has a bug that makes it ignore time zone corrections applied in iPhoto or Aperture.

There is no provision in the Exif standard to store the timezone in the file's metadata -- for example, the "DateTimeOriginal" metadata tag is stored formatted as a 20 byte, null terminated "YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS" character string. There is a provision to store the date (but not the time) relative to UTC in the "GPSDateStamp" metadata tag but unless the camera is GPS enabled & receiving GPS location info, this tag won't be included in the file & there will be no way for Photos (or any other app) to determine the timezone of the location where the photo was taken from its embedded metadata.

When or where you import a photo has no effect on this -- the Exif metadata is written to the photo file by the camera, so unless you change or add to it after import, that is what will be used to determine the date, time, & (if included) GPS location. Moreover, since the GPS date stamp does not include any time of day info, any timezone correction based on that will require an external lookup function to check the location's local time relative to UTC.

IOW, the timezone is meaningless unless the location is known. All Exif date-time metadata is "camera-local," so to speak, & there is nothing Photos or any other app that relies on Exif metadata for that can do about that, other than provide a way to change it. However, since a timezone is inherently a function of a location, in effect it doesn't matter which one you change, which is why the Photos "Adjust Date & Time" option lets you set either the date & time directly or by clicking on a timezone on the world map display.

So basically, since there actually is no timezone in an Exif date-time stamp, it cannot have an incorrect one. It is just a property derived from local camera time & location -- if either one is wrong, the displayed timezone won't be correct, period.

I know that, R C-R.  The missing time zone in the EXIF has been the biggest problem for me, since i started with digital photography, and the better time zone handling was the main reason for me to switch from iPhoto to Aperture.

The bug I am referring to does not apply to the EXIF in imported images, but the time zone data for image versions in photo libraries. Photos migrates the time zone data in Aperture libraries and iPhoto libraries incorrectly. And Photos even displays the time zones incorrectly, when a timezone is specified in Photos using the Adjust Date and Time command.

Apple's photo library application manage time zones, when we specify the time zone on import, but this is broken in Photos.   All edited image versions in my iPhoto Libraries and Aperture libraries have time zones assigned to the versions, and the time zones are shown correctly together with the dates in the info panels in both applications.

But when Photos migrated the libraries it ignored the time zone settings that are stored in the original libraries.

And now the sorting of photos taken with my iPhone and the Lumix cameras is a mess.

For example, in my original Aperture library are photos taken with my iPad and with my Lumix camera.  My iPad will usually be set to the local time zone and the Lumix cameras are always set to UTC.  When importing I specify in Aperture that the correct time zone for the Lumix cameras is UTC and for the iPad for example GMT-8 for Anchorage.

For example, Aperture will show the date and time  correctly for two photos taken at the same time -  11:00 UTC for the Lumix photos and 03:00 GMT-8 for the iPad photos and sort the photos side-by-side.  When I open the library in iPhoto, the dates and times are also shown correctly. But the migrated library in Photos shows the two photos eight hours apart.  The times are shown as 11:00 GMT+2  for the Lumix and 03:00 GMT+2 for the iPad photos.  Photos simply ignores the time zone data in the libraries it migrates and uses the current system time zone name, when it displays the times. The times in all photo libraries I migrated are now a messed the photos from different cameras are no longer correctly sorted.

IOW, the timezone is meaningless unless the location is known. All Exif date-time metadata is "camera-local,"

It is meaningless only for EXIF tags. EXIF tag capture date format is ridiculous, because it does not contain the time zone.  That is why Aperture makes it possible to add the timezone  when photos are imported.  And Photos is also allowing to set the time zone.  It is silly to specify times without the time zone as part of the time. 

And the time zone should not be derived from the location.

That is exactly what is causing the problems when importing photos a day later, after we are in a different state.

léonie wrote:

And the time zone should not be derived from the location.

But it must be. Timezones are defined by the geopolitical regions in which they are in effect. They are not even necessarily constant throughout the year or from one year to the next. They are just standard times established by convention & legislation, used only because it is convenient for the clock time-of-day in different parts of the world to refer to approximately the same time-of-day relative to the sun's position in the sky.

There is no getting around this. A timezone is literally a property of a location, one that is of necessity derived from both local place & time referents.

As for what happens during migration, I don't have Aperture but when I migrate iPhoto libraries I do not see any problems like you describe. If I change the Exif time stamp in iPhoto, it is not ignored by Photos. I'm also not sure what you mean about timezone settings stored in original libraries. AFAIK, there are none, just the Exif time stamps stored in the files themselves. Do you have any idea where I might look for these settings?

But it must be. Timezones are defined by the geopolitical regions in which they are in effect.

But that does not necessarily imply that all devices are recording the times according to the time zone the devices are currently in.  Why should they?

The time zone in combination with a time value is just a unit of measure for the measured value. 

When I am taking part in a scientific experiment, all equipment will measure the time in UTC, independent of the current location. That will provide a universal time scale for all equipment and all collected data.  So it is second nature to me to keep all cameras on UTC and never, ever to change the setting of the internal clocks. So never need to worry to remember to change the clocks in the cameras when traveling.  I know exactly which timezone they are set to, when I import photos from them.  It makes live much easier when popping in and out between time zones like recently when we were traveling along the border between Alaska and Yukon. It was hard enough to make sure to download the iPad photos before the iPad clock changed, when ever we crossed the border again.

léonie wrote:

I know exactly which timezone they are set to, when I import photos from them.

UTC is not a timezone. And without an external reference to local timezones, including to daylight /summertime changes & the dates they are in effect for that particular year, you would not know which timezone UTC relates to. That's why scientific measurements so often use UTC -- it eliminates both the physical & historic location dependency inherent in timezones.

But while that is useful for scientists, for most users (including most amateur & professional photographers) the local time is usually much more useful. After all, how many people really want to have to convert everything from UTC to local time to tell if a photo was taken in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening, or at any other time of day?

Maybe more to the point, the manual for every non-GPS enabled camera I have ever owned suggests setting it to local time. Some have various ways of saving a 'home time zone' setting, but that is just to make it easy to switch back to it after a trip to some place that uses a different timezone.

So if you want to keep everything on UTC & do the conversions yourself or with the help of some external reference, more power to you. It is just that most people do not, & that is what most cameras & apps like Photos are intended for.

UTC is not a timezone.

UTC is the basis used to define timezones by offsets to UTC and it used to be interchangeable with GMT.  I strongly prefer UTC to GMT, because a time specified in UTC does not vary according to silly daylight saving offsets.

You are right, UTC is not a time zone, but it is a well defined measure of time and offered in many Apple menus where you can set the time basis for your clocks.  If you know a date and time in UTC the time a photo has been taken is well defined. Therein no need to know where the phot has been taken to get the photos in a chronological order.

After all, how many people really want to have to convert everything from UTC to local time to tell if a photo was taken in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening, or at any other time of day?

Is that what you want to know about your photos?  I want to know if one photo has been taken before or after a photo and get them into the correct chronological sequence. To have all photos from all cameras correctly sorted is much more important to me.

l if a photo was taken in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening, or at any other time of day?

And that is exactly what is no longer possible in my migrated Aperture and iPhoto libraries, because Photos did not the migrate the time zone settings for the iPad, iPhone, iPod photos.  The photos from my Lumix and Canon cameras are the only ones where i can still tell the correct times, because I know the cameras have been set to UTC, independent of the time zone names Photos is showing now.

Although the discussion of timezones is appropriate to those discussing date sorting, the initial posting also mentioned that manual reordering is not working. This is perhaps the most frustrating thing about this update.

I've a shared album and the View > Keep Sorted by Date menu item is disabled. Fine, manual sorting is also not an option.

This is not a stream feature. Shared albums are "albums".  One would expect that picts in an album can be manually reordered. In any album. If this is not the intent then call it a shared stream for goodness sake.

Detect my level of dissatisfaction with this version? Yes, I'm frustrated. I've a story to tell in a shared album and I'd really, really like to control how that story gets told by ordering the darn pictures.

This is not a stream feature. Shared albums are "albums".  One would expect that picts in an album can be manually reordered. In any album. If this is not the intent then call it a shared stream for goodness sake.

That is exactly the problem.  Shared Photo streams are now called "Shared albums" but they are still the old shared photo streams and behaving like streams.  It is just a bad case of playing with names. Shared albums are ordered by the date added and there is no way to rearrange the photos in the shared album.

léonie wrote:

UTC is the basis used to define timezones by offsets to UTC and it used to be interchangeable with GMT.  I strongly prefer UTC to GMT, because a time specified in UTC does not vary according to silly daylight saving offsets.

Silly or not, timezones based variable geopolitical conventions, not UTC, is the preferred standard for local time all over the world.

If you know a date and time in UTC the time a photo has been taken is well defined.

But not the time of day. For that you must know the location. So for example, if I want to see photos of sunsets or of parades or of any other event associated with a local time of day, I need to consider the location.

And that is exactly what is no longer possible in my migrated Aperture and iPhoto libraries, because Photos did not the migrate the time zone settings for the iPad, iPhone, iPod photos.

As I said, I do not understand what you mean by "migrate the time zone settings." The only timezone related info I know about is the previously mentioned "GPSDateStamp" embedded in the photo itself by GPS-enabled cameras like those in iPhones. As far as I know, together with the embedded local date-time Exif metadata & an external database to correct for time-of-year & year-to-year variations, this is what Photos, iPhoto, or any similar application uses to calculate a timezone for the photo. If for whatever reason a GPS-enabled camera somehow is not set to the local time, this will cause the GPS date stamp to be wrong relative to that time, which obviously will cause the calculated timezone to be wrong as well.

As I said, I do not understand what you mean by "migrate the time zone settings." The only timezone related info I know about is the previously mentioned "GPSDateStamp" embedded in the photo itself by GPS-enabled cameras like those in iPhones.

And again, I am not talking about the image file format and EXIF data,  but the contents of the metadata of image versions modelled in the photo libraries. 

iPhoto, Aperture, Photos all import image files to the library and the database creates image versions from them with associated metadata that we add to the versions.  These are stored in the database files and only copied to the original image files if we force this.   And. at least for me, the most important information I add to the imported image files is the precise time when the photo has been taken by specifying the time zone setting of the camera. This information is stored  in the library.  Photos drops this information when migrating the libraries, and all times will be displayed with the time zone name used when migrating the library and photos taken in different time zones on the same day are no longer sorted correctly in the migrated library.  I call this a buggy library migration, and if it were intentional, it should be documented in the support documents.  https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204478

As far as I know, together with the embedded local date-time Exif metadata & an external database to correct for time-of-year & year-to-year variations, this is what Photos, iPhoto, or any similar application uses to calculate a timezone for the photo. If for whatever reason a GPS-enabled camera somehow is not set to the local time, this will cause the GPS date stamp to be wrong relative to that time, which obviously will cause the calculated timezone to be wrong as well.

iPhoto and Aperture never used the GPS tags in the photos of digital cameras to derive the time zone of the photo but the current system time of the moment of import. In Aperture we can set the camera time zone and the actual time zone in the Import panel.  In iPhoto we can use "Adjust Date &Time" to correct the time according to the time zone, but not the time zone.

Photos does not use the GPS either, or it would not show each and every photo with the time zone of the current system time.

It pretends to handle time zones by allowing to set the time zones in the Adjust Date and Time panel, but when I name the time zone there, the info panel will still display GMT+2, while I am in Germany.

léonie wrote:

And again, I am not talking about the image file format and EXIF data,  but the contents of the metadata of image versions modelled in the photo libraries.

I am sorry but I am really struggling to understand what you mean by any of this. What exactly are these modeled (??) image versions, where are they stored in the libraries, & how does their metadata differ from that which is stored in the Exif metadata embedded in the original file?

You said the database creates versions from them "with associated metadata that we add to the versions." Where are these versions stored & how do they differ from the modeled versions or from the original master files? You say they are stored in the database files, but at least on my systems the database files are far too small to store modified versions of more than a few of the originals.

You said, "These are stored in the database files and only copied to the original image files if we force this." How exactly do we do that? Is the method or the results different in Photos from those in iPhoto or Aperture? How do I set the timezone of the camera in iPhoto or Photos & where exactly is this stored in the library, other than in the Exif metadata? Why is it that if I change the date & time in either app & export the file its date & time metadata includes that change? I get the same results with files migrated from my iPhoto library -- if I change the date & time in iPhoto prior to migration, that change is preserved in the migrated Photos library. You seem to be implying that it is not, at least for you, but if that is what you mean I cannot duplicate that behavior.

For me at least, the time displayed in the Photos Info window is always system time, but if I change that everything changes by the same relative amount in the Info window, so I do not see how this interferes with the chronology of anything.

Basically, as long as I set the camera time to local time or if I forget to do that use the adjustment function in either iPhoto or Photos to correct for that, I don't have any issues like those you describe. Perhaps there is a bug in how Photos handles migrating Aperture libraries that accounts for the difference, but I suspect that instead it has something to do with how you are trying to use UTC as a substitute for timezones.

Basically, as long as I set the camera time to local time or if I forget to do that use the adjustment function in either iPhoto or Photos to correct for that, I don't have any issues like those you describe. Perhaps there is a bug in how Photos handles migrating Aperture libraries that accounts for the difference, but I suspect that instead it has something to do with how you are trying to use UTC as a substitute for timezones.

It is not limited to the UTC setting.  All my iPad and iPhoto photos, that have been taken with the device set to the local time according to the time zone and tagged with GPS by the device are also showing incorrect time zones.

Are you displaying the time zone names with the dates in Photos?

For example, this photo has been taken in Alaska with the iPad and imported while still in Alaska.

Photos is displaying the time as 16:27CEST - our current time in Germany.

The Aperture library I migrated the photo from is showing the correct time zone, as I set it when I imported from the iPad:

You may not notice the problem, if you do not display the time zone names in the info panels.  Then you will only notice an incorrect sorting, if the photos have been imported from different cameras with a different time base.

I could not get Photos to use the correct time zone at all, even by setting the time zones again after I migrated the library:  It still is showing the time zone as CEST and sorting accordingly.