iPad photo sort order changed with iOS 5

ChristogBaer quote: "After all, you should never expect to get all you need from a basic and free application"

I don't know what Alba63 need but I need only correct order of my synced photos and nothing more (I am simple man :-D). I thought, that so simple thing fulfill a basic Photo app as well. Why I must pay 4€ for special app if I don't need any special function as are color changes and many others possibilities?

Questions for iPhoto users: is it possible set this app as default photo app ? (due to import photos from Goodreader or iCab browser and etc). How you upload a photo to this app? Via iTunes as on the default Photo App?

Thanks

Petr

CHristof, this misses my main point. It is not whether another app can provide more functionality or not, I will not do photo processing on the iPad, I do this on my PC in photoshop etc., but the photo app of iPad has a very intuitive user interface that is great for showing photos around. Even my 2,5 year old daughter understood how to open galleries using 2 fingers spreading, or closing them. Now, many of my galleries make sense in a chronolocical order, some have 100 photos or more. This used to work! And they have messed it up. No sort order at all makes the app useless. I do not really mind iphoto costs 3,4 or 5 bucks, I may buy it at one point or another, it just does not offer the fluid simplicity of the photo app. Why do they even go on including photo app if it does not do anything any longer except in the most chaotic and unhelpful way? And what with the people who built up big galleries that just worked - even pros - and who are left now with one big mess?

So I just ask whre is Apples highly praised user friendlyness and intuitive strenght?

Very dissappointed...

Bernie

Well, as far as I can tell, you can't arrange/hide albums in ipad iPhoto (just bought and installed it). Nor does it arrange in the user selected order as specified on my desktop version of iPhoto.

Once again, not understanding the logic that apple is using to develop the photo functionallity on the iPad. Obviously they are not people who have to show pictures to people on a regular basis or media professionals.

Personally, I went with Photos Pro on the App Store. Doesn't do a lot of photo imaging stuff, but very focused on photo data and organization (drag & drop, auto sorting by date, name, title, etc., multiple albums in mulitple libraries), basically everything I wanted to organize my photos the way I want without having to create a separate duplicate copy of my existing iPad Photos Library. Can even transfer your libraries and albums back to a PC using iTunes "File Sharing".

Ah, i now start to get it. Apple wants to make an extra buck with iPhoto. Sad.

Well too bad for them, i already started using FileBrowser, which offers great help viewing stuff from other computers in the house too.

I am fairly sure this is a Samba or maybe a general network filesystem related bug, I have copied my published photos from the Samba share they are on directly to my Windows 7 desktop and it has fixed the ordering problems I was having. It might be worth reporting this to the Samba team with some debug logs.

I've spent a while debugging this and I am I pretty sure I know what the problem is and there is a solution at least for people sharing files with modern versions of samba.

iTunes is using the order of files returned by QueryDirectory, when this syscall is used on an NTFS directory it returns the files in the directory in alphabetical order, however Samba doesn't presort the results and so people see the random ordering of photos.

The is a VFS module for samba called dirsort that will work round this problem, I've done a fuil write up on my blog http://blog.night-shade.org.uk/2012/03/fixing-ipad-photo-sort-order-with-samba/

I would say its more a bad assumption on the part of iTunes, that I have worked round with samba.

I think if you look at the syscalls that iTunes is making with process explorer when you sync the ordering of the files from the query directory syscall will exactly match the order of the photos you see on your iPad. However my windows knowledge is good enough to know how to fix this for a local drive.

TimJDFletcher: thank for your idea, but I have problem with order of photos with network drive connected via AFP protocol (and with samba protocol of course too). My network solution is based on the Linux Ubuntu server 11.10.

Petr

TimJDFletcher: Wou, you are amazing. All photos are sorted correctly now (via Samba protocol). Thank you a lot.

Now I go find some solution for AFP protocol (combination of MacOS and Samba on Linux isn't very fast 😀).

I have found out something more that might help you I'm still looking into it now but this might help you.

The problem might be being shown because of the ext3 feature called dir_index which "Use hashed b-trees to speed up lookups in large directories" according to the tune2fs man page.

Before you starting tinkering with this make sure you have a backup!

If you turn off the dir_index feature like this:

tune2fs -O -dir_index /dev/sdX

And then force a fsck of the device

fsck -y -D -f /dev/sdX

This has helped me get an unsorted list of files from ls -U to return in order, I'm about to try syncing the iPad again without the Samba VFS module.

Hey guys, I've benn following your discussion and it all seems to me as if I'm watching an episode of The Big Bang Theory..!! I don't have a clue what you're talking about... and im jealous! If you have to be a computer wizard just to get the photos in the correct order, then all of us laymen who have just an iPad, a computer and iTunes are doomed. Any suggestions for us poor ******** who are being driven up the walls by Apple with this ridiculous problem and don't have your computing knowledge?

I have managed to sync the photos to my iPad in order but it's in reverse alpherbetical order. So I'm fairly clear where the problem is and what the work around is for Samba.

The problem is that iTunes is assuming either by accident or design that files are returned in a sorted list by the OS when it lists the files in a folder.

This assumption does not hold true when the files are stored on Linux and exported via a network filesystem to iTunes and so you get the files in a "random" disk order.

There is a work around for Samba using the VFS module dirsort, however this is very much a work around and no such work around exists for netatalk as far as I am aware.

If your files are on a network share, copy them to your local drive and make sure they are named in the order you want them to appear on your iPad/iPhone, nuke an iPod photo cache folders and resync your iDevice's photos.

I am then fairly sure that it will work for you.

The real fix has to be in iTunes thou, all I am talking about and demoing is a work around not a fix.

I am almost certain that iTunes and the Photos app no longer use exif data to sort the photos.

My reasons are:

1. My photos are dated and sorted correctly and when I sync them with the samba fix they appear in the "random" order people are complaining about, however if I install the iPhone app it correctly sorts them by exif date.

2. If I copy the photos exactly as is to my Windows machine's local disk and make no changes to the photos and resync them, they then appear in the correct order by file name.

3. If I make the 1 change to Samba to make it return directory listings in a sorted order then the photos again appear correctly sorted in the Photos app.

I think that a change has been made in either photos app or in iTunes between iOS 4.x and 5.x that means photos are now displayed in the order they appear on the filesystem, note this is not always the same as the order that a human might expect.

It would be interesting to see what order the photos appear in iOS but both of my iDevices are now running 5.1 so I can't jailbreak them anymore.