Photos for Mac – how to give photos in an album sequential titles to keep them in order

For previous holidays, the photos I had taken were processed in a separate folder outside of the Photos app (v 8.0) on my iMac (Ventura 13.5.2) before transferring them to Photos. This involved things like deletions, adding titles and comments, for example, and then running them through a script or workflow which I had set up using the Automator app which I called “Rename Files Sequentially.workflow”. This kept them in the correct order whilst outside of Photos.

This system worked for me but did involve a lot of work. So, I looked to try and simplify the process. Following a recent holiday, I placed all the photos taken (600 in total) directly in a new album in the Photos app on my iMac. The photos were taken either on an iPhone 13 Pro or a digital camera and, of course, each used a different system for naming the files (e.g. IMG_0100.HEIC for the iPhone and P1110920.JPG for the camera).

The album in Photos shows the greyed out file names beneath each photo icon. I have not yet given them individual titles, and, having placed the photos in the required order in the album, the file names are obviously now not in order and neither do they run in date order.

I am aware that the photos can only be sorted in Photos “by title”, “by oldest first” or “by newest first”. To ensure that the photos stay in the order I have placed them, I want to give them each a title including a number. I can then Sort by Title.

The only way I can see of doing this is by manually entering a title at the top of the Info window for every photo individually. But this would, again, involve a lot of work. To have to export the photos to a folder on my iMac, use the above script and then import back to Photos would only mean more work and might not guarantee that the photos remain in the required order.

Is there a way of doing this easily within the Photos app which I have yet to discover, or is there an app which would safely work with Photos and which would not upset the existing order in the album?

Richard