File Name Shift in Photo

It is a change in the recents versions of Photos that the file name is no longer used as a default title, when sorting the photos by title. Photos 4 on macOS 10.14 Mojave has been the last version, that could use the filename as a default title when sorting.

I am using PowerPhotos as a second browser window for my Photos Library, when I want to see my photos sorted by the filename. It offers a nice column view with metadata, and I can easily see the albums sorted by the filename by clicking the filename column: http://www.fatcatsoftware.com/powerphotos

The free trial version will suffice to use the column view for the albums - for example:

I can't quite tell if you actually want a solution. As Matti Haveri has said, you can use scripts to copy the filename to the Title field.

Instead of scripts, I use a 3rd party app, Photos Workbench ($30), to set my titles. It offers a variety of options, including using the file name:

Or you can make more complex titles

When I scan images, I often add the title, keywords, and caption to the IPTC metadata with the app GraphicConverter  ($40) before importing to Photos.

Lawrence Giordano wrote:

file name goes to the second line of the med data, and the top line which is the title is left blank

You could use 3rd party apps like exiftool to copy the filename to the Title before importing to Photos.

Or use some AppleScript to do that inside Photos. I let others to chime in for such a script.

Lawrence Giordano wrote:

What happens is that I imported 25,000 digital images that already had titles on them as final names

When imported into photo, the file names that I had dropped to the second line of the med and the top line says insert a title

How did you add that title before importing?

Photos can import either IPTC or XMP tag. Currently apps like GraphicConverted insert it to both and keep them in sync. exiftool reports them like this:

exiftool -a -G1 -s 2001-0101-1200-00.jpg 
[IPTC]          ObjectName                      : Title
[XMP-dc]        Title                           : Title

And Photos imports either of those as:

If you have Photos > View > Metadata > Titles selected, the imported image's filename should be under the image (unless you have added a Title for that image).