Pajundrum
Level 1 (4 points)
Photos for Mac

Q: Photo Sorting in Sierra

I recently returned from a trip and imported my photos into Photos. They are a mix of iPhone photos and those from my camera, but I synced the time on both so they would be in the right order once mixed together.  Because I was in the mountains, some photos have an embedded geographic location, and some don't.

 

However, in Photos, there doesn't seem to be a way to just sort by time. It is grouping all photos with geographic location info as a moment, then showing those without much later in the order. This even applies to trying to sort an album by "Oldest First". The result is very disjointed and confusing, as photos taken seconds apart of the same subject don't appear anywhere near each other in the sorted album.

 

Other than manually updating hundreds of photos with an approximate location, or stripping everything of its location data, is there any way to work around this?

iMac (27-inch, Late 2012), macOS Sierra (10.12)

Posted on Oct 7, 2016 8:42 AM

by manivo,Solvedanswer
manivo manivo
Level 1 (114 points)
Photos for Mac
A:

Did you take the photos in a different time zone than your home, where you imported the photos?

Then Photos has assign your home time zone to the photo without location data.

Those Photos will be sorted before or after your GPS tagged photos, for which the Photos app gets the right time zone.

You can check this by selecting one of the location-less photos, via "Adjust date and time" in the "Image" menu.

If this is the case, select all photos taken with the GPS-less camera and assign the correct time zone. It will be updated for all selected photos.

Posted on Oct 7, 2016 9:40 AM

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Pajundrum

Q: Photo Sorting in Sierra

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  • Helpful answers

  • by LarryHN,

    LarryHN LarryHN Oct 7, 2016 8:53 AM in response to Pajundrum
    Level 10 (85,648 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 7, 2016 8:53 AM in response to Pajundrum

    Make a user album of the photos - either a standard album or a smart album (the smart album for all photos between certain dates probably makes sense) and you can then sort that album by date/time either ascending or descending or by title (view menu ==> Sort)

     

    LN

  • by manivo,Solvedanswer

    manivo manivo Oct 7, 2016 9:40 AM in response to Pajundrum
    Level 1 (114 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 7, 2016 9:40 AM in response to Pajundrum

    Did you take the photos in a different time zone than your home, where you imported the photos?

    Then Photos has assign your home time zone to the photo without location data.

    Those Photos will be sorted before or after your GPS tagged photos, for which the Photos app gets the right time zone.

    You can check this by selecting one of the location-less photos, via "Adjust date and time" in the "Image" menu.

    If this is the case, select all photos taken with the GPS-less camera and assign the correct time zone. It will be updated for all selected photos.

  • by Pajundrum,

    Pajundrum Pajundrum Oct 7, 2016 11:33 AM in response to LarryHN
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 7, 2016 11:33 AM in response to LarryHN

    I put the photos in a standard album, which is sorted by "Keep sorted by oldest first". The photos in the album are not sorted chronologically; all photos without location data appear at the end of the day.

  • by Pajundrum,

    Pajundrum Pajundrum Oct 7, 2016 11:44 AM in response to manivo
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 7, 2016 11:44 AM in response to manivo

    This is helpful, thanks. My camera, a Nikon Coolpix, lets me set the travel time zone, but this apparently doesn't get embedded with the photo. So the photos had the correct time, but each photo without location is being assigned my home time zone, as you say, which why Photos thinks they are part of a different moment.

     

    Looking through the moment groupings, it will be possible with some work to select each day's location-less photos and fix the time zone (while avoiding the "correction" to the already-accurate time it will try to apply). This causes them to get properly integrated with the others.

  • by Pajundrum,

    Pajundrum Pajundrum Oct 7, 2016 12:06 PM in response to Pajundrum
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 7, 2016 12:06 PM in response to Pajundrum

    An option for selecting an album by either time zone or missing location data would make this much easier, as I could do it all at once. As it is, I can't simply correct the time zone by selecting all photos from that camera - if the time zone is correct for the first photo selected, it doesn't change the others. If it is incorrect for the first photo, it makes the time for the photos with location data incorrect.

  • by manivo,

    manivo manivo Oct 7, 2016 2:06 PM in response to Pajundrum
    Level 1 (114 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Oct 7, 2016 2:06 PM in response to Pajundrum

    I assumed that *all* photos taken with your Nikon on the mountain trip had been imported later, with the wrong time zone. Now if you had all those photos in the same album, then you could do a smart album that displays only the Nikon photos from the mountain album. If there is no mountain album, you could filter by date to catch only those Nikon photos where the time zone is 100% wrong.