Exports not in chronological order: How to export in CreateDate order.

Question

Exports not in chronological order: How to export in CreateDate order.

Hopefully this is an easy one but I can't figure it out. I have an event with about 850 pictures that were taken over a week's time. When originally imported into iPhoto they spanned several events because iPhoto by default creates one event per day. I subsequently merged all the events, and indeed the photos are in chronological order in iPhoto.

When I export to a folder on the desktop (JPEG High quality, Full size) and then examine that folder, +the photos are no longer in the order taken.+ The first day's photos seem to be in the middle, for example. The photos were renamed with ascending number values, but, for example, image 086 appears about halfway down, behind, say, 487.

It appears that the EXIF Create Date is not the criterion used to sort exported images(?) How can I get iPhoto to export this way? Who wants to look at a disk full of vacation images that are completely out of order. It seems to me to be the logical, default way to export a series of images.

Help! Thank you! 🙂

MacBook Pro 2.33 GHz, Mac OS X (10.6.6)

Posted on Jan 18, 2011 10:22 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Jan 18, 2011 11:02 AM in response to Craig Deutsch

iPhoto is exporting this way, the problem is that the Finder won't sort on the Exif date. And when you export, you're exporting to the Finder.

Here's one (of several) way(s) to do what you want:

1. Select all the pics in the Album

2. Then Photos Menu: Batch Change -> Set Title to Text "John's Birthday", for instance, and tick the box to append a number to each Photo. Now your photos are titled 'John's Birthday 001, John's Birthday 002 ... etc'

3. Then File -> Export and in the Export dialogue set the Filename to "Use Title"

4. Sort on Filename in the FInder and you end up with a folder full of images in the same order as the Album in iPhoto.

Regards

TD

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Answer 2

Jan 18, 2011 11:43 AM in response to Yer_Man

That was simple and it worked, Terence. Thank you so much!

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Answer 3

Jowie

Level 2

222 points

Sep 7, 2013 4:31 AM in response to Yer_Man

Terence Devlin wrote:

iPhoto is exporting this way, the problem is that the Finder won't sort on the Exif date. And when you export, you're exporting to the Finder.

Not strictly true, because it is iPhoto that is renaming the files to save to the finder, and it is renaming them in a different order to the EXIF data. I found this to be a problem too, when trying to export by selecting an Event. But, if you open the Event and select all of the photos, followed by Export, then iPhoto will correctly export all the photos in the correct order.

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Answer 4

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Sep 7, 2013 4:52 AM in response to Jowie

No that is strictly true. The Finder won't sort on Exif Date. End of story. When you export you're exporting to the FInder. This is also exactly true.

iPhoto doesn't rename anything at all unless you tell it to. So, frankly, I'm not sure what you're talking about.

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Answer 5

Jowie

Level 2

222 points

Sep 7, 2013 7:11 AM in response to Yer_Man

I know the Finder won't sort on exif date. But when you export from iPhoto, it is iPhoto that names the files for export. If you export them at the Event level, it doesn't rename them in exif chronological order correctly. However, if you open the event and select all the photos and export as sequentially numbered files, it will number them correctly based on exif data. It has nothing to do with the Finder.

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Answer 6

Old Toad

Level 10

207,679 points

Sep 7, 2013 9:31 AM in response to Jowie

if you open the event and select all the photos and export as sequentially numbered files, it will number them correctly based on exif data. It has nothing to do with the Finder.

That's only true if the photos in the event are sorted by date. However, photos in events can be sorted 4 different ways, 8 if you take into consideration ascending or descending.

The sequential export uses whatever the current sort is in the Event as its basis.

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Answer 7

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Sep 7, 2013 9:46 AM in response to Jowie

But when you export from iPhoto, it is iPhoto that names the files for export.

Correct.

If you export them at the Event level, it doesn't rename them in exif chronological order correctly

Renaming in exif chroological order? Is that a feature? iPhoto does not rename files at all unless you tell it to. If you don't tell it to then it will export the files with the same name as they imported with.

However, if you open the event and select all the photos and export as sequentially numbered files, it will number them correctly based on exif data.

No it won't. It will export them as sequentially numbered files based on the sort you were using at the time of export, as OT points out. The sequential numbering has nothing to do with the exif data and everything to so with the sort order you have chosen in the Event or Album. Choose a different sort order in the Event and you'll get a different result.

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