Sorting by time in Aperture

Nick Stout wrote:
Nathan,
Thanks for this, but it's not the date I want to sort on, it's the TIME. Imagine I've got a bunch of images from 3 different cameras all shot on the same day. How do I get them sorted in order of the time of day they were captured?
Thanks. Nick

I realize this post is two years old.. However, I do not understand what you mean by incongruent batch time adjustmens? I also like to shoot using two different cameras. I synced both my cameras before my shoot today. I imported them into a project in Aperture and sorted by DATE. Aperture will not combine my two cameras. It instead sorts one camera by date and then the 2nd camera by date. I want to sync my entire project by date regardless of camera model and can't for the life of me figure out how to do this. Help!

Oh wait. Sorry for the bother. I figured it out!

I am tearing my hair out over this one.

I have selected sort by date from the "library action" dropdown - doesnt work!

Right clik on folder and you only have a choice of "keep arrange by- kind, name or manual"

It still only sorts out by camera type and date so i have all the shots on my Nikon then all the shots on my Lumix

I swapped to Mac after 25 year of PCs and most of the time I'm happy, but this is bugging me.

My photo archive is 30,000 images divided into years, months, and trips, so about 20 folders per year.

I chose Aperture as it manages much better than Iphoto, but this is bugging me - what have I missed?

Please tell me the secrets!

SouthcoasterUK,

are you trying the sort the photos or the events and albums in the folder?

I have selected sort by date from the "library action" dropdown - doesnt work!

Right clik on folder and you only have a choice of "keep arrange by- kind, name or manual"

These should sort your library items in the Inspector panel - folders, albums, events.

If you want to sort the photos within the library items, use the pop-up menu in the Browser:

Hi,

I have tried this, it's wierd, the NIkon fils are namedDSC_**** and the Lumix files are P101**** . if I use the pop up menu to order them by say file size, it works.

Just going to try something.....

I have just been working on another project and that is indexing OK. I think I will re-sample the original project and see what it does.

Thank heavens I always download to a master archive before I imported it into Apperture.

Thank you for your very quick response, much appreciated.

hi wsaikpeterson,

I am also trying to figure out how to filter by time from 2 different camera ... as you said when I filter by DateTime it sorts each camera by DateTime not both.

it seems that you find out how to do that, can you share the info please ?

thanks.

osp.

I imagine that this is a timezone problem. I bet each camera is doing something slightly different with its time. To check, select 1 photo from each camera by ⌘-clicking on the two photos. Then click on the Info tab on in the left bar to see what time Aperture thinks the pictures were taken. It may be that the time is just wrong, or that the time is correct but hte time zone is wrong. So maybe it says PST, but you expect it to be EST or it's GMT and you expect it to be GMT+2. Aperture sorts on the date & time in the photo's EXIF data, plus the timezone it thinks the photo is in.

Now, if the two pictures have the right time, but different time zones, that that's why they're being sorted the way they are. To update what timezome Aperture thinks the photos are in, open the Metadata/Batch Change window. Select the timezone brick. One thing that's a little weird is that the Info window shows a timezone, but ignore that for now. For the Camera Time Zone, select the city for the time zone that the numbers in the time is (so, ignore the PST or whatever is in the Info brick). For the Actual Time Zone, pick what the correct timezone for the photo is. It is often the case that both cities are the same, which seems odd, but it right.

Now, if the numbers of the time are off, you can update these via the Metadata/Adjust Date and Time... dialog. I recommend not updating the dates in the file, but just in Aperture. You should do this if the times are off due to a dead camera bettery or something where the times are off by an hour & 45 minutes or somthing. If they're off by an exact timezone hour or two, adjust using the timezone dialog above.

For both of these dialogs, they can operate on a bunch of photos. The adjustments are done relative to the initial time, which is pretty cool.

Good luck!