iPad photo sort order changed with iOS 5

Thank you so much for figuring this out. I use lightroom so I re-exported with the EXIF data turned off and everythign was back to being alphabetical. I was really at a loss till I saw this thread.

http://www.joshrosscreative.com

I just had this problem moving from a PC to an iMac while I upgraded to IOS6. An album on the iPad that had been sorted by filename was now sorted by date. In iPhoto, I used a batch process to set all of the dates to the same value, and now the album is sorted by filename again.

iPhoto lets you sort by several criteria, but this does not seem to carry over to the iPad after syncing.

mks1 wrote:

Forgot to mention, firstly delete 'ipad photo cache' folder from inside photos folder on the PC if it exists

Thanks for the advice; I tried setting file modified date 1 min. apart on each photo using 3rd party Windows Utility "Attribute Changer 7.10b", deleted photos from PC sync folder, deleted iPad photo cache folder, sync'd, re-added photos with modified date, sync'd again, didn't work.

I then altered all three date/time values on each photo (created, modified, accessed) to the same time, with each successive photo's three date/time values 1 hour advanced from the prior photo. Did not delete photo cache again, just removed photos from sync folder, sync'd (which deletes from iPad), then put photos with modified times back in sync folder, sync'd, and it worked.

Either it's not "time last modified", or the iPad doesn't look at minute-level data.

Config details:

Windows 7 64-bit Home Premium

iTunes 11.0.0.163

iPad 3 WiFi, 64MB

iOS 6.0.1

nVidia P55-FTW (A72 BIOS), 16GB DDR3, i7-875K @ 4.01 Ghz

WD 1TB 10k rpm Velociraptor boot drive

2 x 2TB RAID 0 7200 rpm Caviar Black data drive

More info: after further testing, the built-in iPad photo app will not consistently retain the photo sort order, even IF all three date flags (created, accessed, time last modified) are sequentially one day apart.

Scenario: I alter the date flags on a group of four photos on my PC, move those to the iPad, sync, and they are in date order on the iPad. Then -- after moving *other* photos to a different photo album on the iPad and syncing, the first four photos are no longer in order. But I didn't change those after the initial sync. The order changed by itself.

Putting them back in order requires this procedure:

(1) In Windows Explorer, move them off the photo sync folder (designated in iTunes)

(2) Sync iPad, which then deletes the photos from the album

(3) In Windows Explorer, move them back to the photo sync folder

(4) Sync iPad

This puts them back in order, yet they weren't changed. This should not be required and is a cumbersome procedure.

If the iPad photo app has specific sorting behavior, this should be documented *by Apple* for *all* conditions. If there are exceptions or bugs, this also should be documented. Apple has the source code. It should not be left to end users to determine this by trial and error.

One of main purposes of an iPad is photo display -- it is not a niche use. Using a 3rd party photo display app should not be required for something basic as sort order.

It's true that Apple should get something as basic as this working properly. But it has been a long time, and Apple doesn't even acknowledge the problem, let alone fix it. This arrogance is unlike the Apple we thought we knew. It will come back to hurt them, and perhaps it already has.

Meanwhile, a great app to use instead is Photo Shack HD. In addition to sorting things properly, it has many other great features. What I like best is that it allows the display of photo captions. Captions I've entered in photoshop are imported and displayed, and can be edited. You can even have it display those captions during a slide show.. And it can play music during the slide show. When it displays album thumbnails, it also shows the count of the number of photos in the album (optionally).

But what is best about Photo Shack is the author. Have a problem or want a new feature? Email the author, and the reply comes back in minutes. I've had quick replies on weekends and nights. And the enhancements are installed in the next release, which is typically a week or two, at no charge. Now THAT's service.

I’ll been frustrated for about a month now after updating to iSO 5 on my 1st Gen iPad. I have thousands of pictures and they are now in a somewhat scrambled order which makes it difficult to show them to my friends. Today I had a bit of time to see what I could do about it. From my Web search it appeared the the problem lies in the fact that someone at Apple decided that iOS 5 should sort photos on Modification Date (MD) rather than Creation Date (CD). What a mistake!! I edit all my photos before I input them into iPhoto so that the MD has nothing to do with the CD. I decided one needs to change the MD in some systematic way. How can this be done on large (batch) groups of photos within iPhoto. It can be done easily.

Step 1. Arrange you photos in iPhoto in the order you want them on your iPad. Do this as a group, album, whatever.

Step 2. Select all of the photos in any group.

Step 3. Click rotate Clockwise (or Counter Clockwise) under the PHOTO Menu four times to do a complete revolution back to the upright position. The fourth rotation may take more time for a large set of photos. This operation apparently changes the MD to order the photos as they appear.

Step 4. Sinc your iPad with the new modified iPhoto data.

It worked for me and may work for you.

It's so stupid that you have to do that - why not just have an option? But hey, it worked, and for that, I'm very grateful BillfromBenicia

This worked for me too. Definitely still a bug, but at least I now have a workaround. Thanks for that.

For those of you who use iTunes to sync to a folder with images in it, I have found a decent work-around.

I am a fashion photographer and we use a database of approx. 20,000 images to show clients what ideas we're considering for shoot direction. While I don't care too much about all of them being in alphabetical order, although that would be quite lovely, I do care if my portfolio is properly paginated.

An app called SmallImage [http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/12759/smallimage] allows you to strip the metadata from images, forcing the Photos app to sort alphabetically. I wouldn't run this on an entire database of images, but for me it works to show prospects my work in the order I intended. Take care in not stripping out the ICC profile, otherwise your images will literally be ruined.

I'm not sure how iPhoto manipulates pictures, but generally, it is not advisable to "rotate" a jpeg picture just to change the modified date.

Why? because jpeg is a lossy compression format Every Open and Save operation degardes the picture quality (although it may not be very apparent unless you really examine it carefully at 100%).

I just bought Photo Shack and realized from the data the app exposes about the pics that Apple strips the filename I give my pictures (for identification and sorting) and replaces it with three letters and a seqential number like IMG1234. How do I get iTunes to upload my pics to my ipad w/o losing the filename? I have W7.

Hi WSC33,

Check out this blogpost on how to include your filenames automatically within your photos' metadata. Photo Shack can automatically use this for its filenames when you import your photos.

http://www.applgasm-apps.com/Blog/?p=499

Great Applgasm.

Thanks so much. Are these global commands? In other words, do they affect every file in a folder or do i have to execute this for each individual file?

2. "You may need to modify the EXIFTool command line a little to omit the file name extension if you wish, since Photo Shack Pro will add it automatically upon sharing the photo to your computer." How do I modify the command line? Do you mean instead of "Filename.jpg" enter "Filename"?

3. Your referenced post was well over a year ago. When will this update you mention be included in PSP 5.60?

Hi everybody and WSC33,

The Photos application in your Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, iPod) sort your album with “date taken” from the EXIF data. The problem is the item Authors in your pictures is empty, and the application sort your pictures with wrong way. It’s very easy to fix it.

Select your pictures folder > Select all> Right-click> Properties>Details and then fill any name you want in the Authors item. Windows explorer fills all your pictures in a second.

Sync your pictures folder with iTunes. And now, your (iPhone, iPad…) sort your pictures like as you want. Good luck!

Did exactly as you described with "authors" and nothing happened...still out of order.

I use a master folder list with folder names like 2012, 2013 etc and then subfolders for topics. I went in to each subfolder selected all photos and changed the author, synced, no result.