Sorting Photos by Date

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Level 1

53 points

Sorting Photos by Date

I am creating a Photobook from photos taken on a long motorcycle trip from Anchorage to Buenos Aires. They are all in Photos just fine and sorted by date taken - thus making it easier to drag images onto the right page in the book. So far so good. For the trip, I created a route document which had screenshots taken from Google Maps with Directions. I dropped these screenshots into the Trip Album which worked just fine too, except that, being the most recent, all these screenshots are clustered at the top. Fine, I thought, I will adjust the date on each screenshot to match the day of the relevant photos and that way, they will sort themselves into place ready for turning into a book. Except this doesn't work!

Does anyone have any idea how to force Photos to adopt the changed date so I can get my screenshot map images nestled among the photos in the right order?

Failing that, within the Album, is there a way to manually drag each screenshot map image to relevant place?

Thanks

MacBook Pro with Touch Bar

Posted on Oct 21, 2020 9:07 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

TonyCollinet

Level 7

24,050 points

Oct 21, 2020 2:45 PM in response to Dick Powell

How are you adjusting the date/time? I've just tested with a .png screenshot, changed the date from the image>adjust date time menu, and it correctly sorts by date together with a selection of other images in an album.

(I've also chosen View>sort>Keep sorted by oldest first for the album)

If that is not working, which version of photos do you have?

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,639 points

Oct 22, 2020 10:34 AM in response to Dick Powell

Which system version do you have installed ?

When you ctrl-click or right click the album in the sidebar, you can change the sort order from the Sort menu:

Only the very first versions of Photos did not allow to sort the photos in the albums automatically.

In the older versions of Photos you had to quit and restart Photos after adjusting the date and time for the sort order to be updated in the Moments.

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Answer 3

Dick Powell Author

Level 1

53 points

Oct 22, 2020 4:32 AM in response to TonyCollinet

Thanks Tony. Actually they are jpegs and I adjusted the day (not the time) in Photos/Image/Adjust Date and Time. Like you, I kept them sorted by Oldest first. And, for some reason they don't resort themselves into date order. Still, no matter, I found a workaround (see reply to Matti) that allows for manual moving. I guess this is just some kind of glitch - I have read that changing the dates will sort the screenshots into date order when looking at my entire photo collection (which drops them into a vast pool of thousands of images and makes them too hard to find again) , but this doesn't work in Albums!

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Answer 4

Dick Powell Author

Level 1

53 points

Oct 22, 2020 4:27 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Thanks for offering this help but it's well beyond my technical capabilities I'm afraid. And there are not so many screenshots that I can't adjust them all one by one when in an Album (I found I can do that despite being sorted by date!). Hurrah!

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Answer 5

Oct 21, 2020 12:02 PM in response to Dick Powell

Often iOS screenshot .png files import to Photos with a wrong date or location. My memo for the fix in GraphicConverter:

Photos looks at the XMP date so it might be wrong in iOS .png screen captures. Delete in GC via Browser > Actions > Metadata... > Remove Metadata... > XMP.

Photos may not readily see location data pasted from GraphicConverter in iOS .png from GPSless devices. To fix, delete in GC via Browser > Action > Metadata... > Remove Metadata... > all. Then add ratings. Then paste GPS. Then Date > Set Modification to Creation date.

Another option is to convert .png to .jpg where metadata handling is more robust.

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Sorting Photos by Date

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