iPad photo sort order changed with iOS 5

A further experiment with a folder of scanned old photos with no exif data in the files has show something interesting, I have synced the folder with the Samba fix and I now get different ordering between the Photos app and the iPhoto app.

In Photos the pictures appear in alphebetical order, exactly as on the filesystem.

In the iPhoto app the picutres appear in order they have last been modified in which is not alphebetical order in this case.

I now have an iPad 1 and an iPad 3. Both are running on iOS 5.1.

iTunes runs under Windows 7 64 bit, and all the pictures are an a Windows Home Server.

The pictures are referenced thru a drive share.The pictures are organized with Adobe Photo SE (old, but still working).

In iTunes I use the Adobe as the photo data base.

With iOS 5.x I got the order problem.

With the new iPad I have also installed iPhoto. And now it becomes interessting:

The sort order in iPhoto is correct, in alphabetical order, but in the standard photo App wrong.

EXIF, this is something I do not really understand. I am talking about the folder, they are in alphabetical order in iPhoto, and this was the case with iOS 4.

The pictures in the folder do effect the folder order, I dont think so. In my case, the order of he folder has nothing to do with any EXIF date of any picture in my folders.

And I thing, I did not check, that the folder order in the photo app after a sync is not always the same. I will keep an eye on it....

I apologise if this has been posted, I have read most of this post but not all of it.

I found this forum after upgrading to the new iPad from the iPad 2 for the new screen only. I am a professional photographer and this essential for me. I too found my photos scrambled!! After a few days of stressing, and apologising to a client on Saturday when I showed them my portfolio on a sluggish iPhoto, just to get the photos in order.

I then made a slideshow using slideshow+HD, which is great BTW, and then found my photos out of order in iPhoto! very frustrating.

I have however found a very simple way to order the photos on iOS5. The ordering is name order, but alphabetical! If the files are numbered liek this: photo-1, photo-2 etc. Then the 10th photo will appear after photo-1. ie. photo-1, photo-10, as this is alphabetical. To solve this, change your file names so they have the same number of place values in place, ie, photo-001, photo-002. Your file names will then be in alphabetical order, and will appear in order on the photos app on your iOS5 iPad.

From now on all my photos are going to be exported from lightroom with this numbering system to save me manually changing the first 100 photos for each of my files. Good job i have no folders that go over 1000 pics!

i hope this works for you all.

David Stubbs

www.davidstubbsphotography.com

My problem is similar but not identical. I group my photos by album name. This comes from using photoshop elements. I'm not particularly concerned about the sequence of photos within one albumn, but rather the sequence of albums. On the iPhone, iPad, and apple TV, the sequence of the albums is the same, but seemingly random. Before ios5, the album names were listed in alphabetical order. In iTunes, where you can choose which albums to sync to the iPhone or iPad, the album names are listed in alphabetical order. Why in the world would anyone want albumn names listed in anything but alphabetical order?

Does my problem stem from the same situation as yours? Do all of you just keep all your photos in one album? If you do, I don't understand how you quickly find a photo regardless of sorting sequence. Am I missing something?

Can anyone suggest an alternative to photoShop elements that would allow albumn names and syncing those names in proper sequence? I'm using a PC not a Mac.

Thanks.

Wow this thread has become the Bermuda triangle! Instead of a message from Apple that goes like "Oh thanks for pointing this issue out, we instantly send it to our software development team and we hope to present a fix within a forseeable time frame", you, dear Apple team now have decided to just block user voices instead of listening to them.

Very interesting conception of user friendlyness. This has been going on for 6 months, with zero reaction from Apple.

So:

I have started several threads in photo forums, some big ones, and have contacted a computer magazine editor to look into the issue. I will write more of those.

Bernie

no further posts in this matter?

strange...

In the meantime I found another weired problem:

at iPhoto I have the thumbs. These pictures are correct, but if I tap on some,

I get a total different picture. This is the case at some pictures in almost every album.

Some at he orig. Foto App, the thumb is correct, but the full size picture is a total different one.

And now it becomes more weired! I have also an iPad 1, which syncs the same pictures.

And here the thumb corresponds with the full size picture. I am asking myself, what apple is doing here,

except deleting crititcal posts.... ;)

I know there's been talk of suing, and contacting other publications to get this problem solved. I can't imagine lawsuits going anywhere, given Apple's deep pockets, and our relatively shallow ones. Contacting other publications may eventually force Apple's hand to do the right thing., although it could take some time. But for me, $4.99 solved the problem.

My beef has been that albums are not sorted in alphabetical order, as they were in ios prior to version 5. I haven't paid any attention to the sort order within an album, so I can't speak to that, although I believe that the two are connected.

But with the purchase of iPhoto,my problem has disappeared. Photo albums in iPhoto ARE stored in alphabetical order by album name, as they were in the free Photos App before ios5. The sequence within an album has also changed, so perhaps this is solved as well. So while fighting Apple on this issue may be the "right" thing to do, it just isn't worth a lot of effort for me, when I can spend five dollars, solve the issue, and get some nice editing functions to boost.

Note: The sort order on Apple TV is, of course, unchanged and incorrect, but hopefully Apple will fix this, or make iPhoto available there.

Hello kreisman,

iPhoto does not help an appleTV (you mention it) and it does not help on an ipad 1. There are still millions of these out there.

But even iPhoto has a problem. As i described before, in some albums the thumbs are correct, but if you click on it you get a total different picture. No idea, where it comes from.

In addition, the iPhoto often comes with "updateing Mediatheak" which last very long...

Until Apple fixes these bugs that seem to affect not only the Photos App, Photo Manager Pro ($2.99) did the trick for me. It is actually a very good App: it does everything the Photos App should do but can't. You can create folders and sub folders, order by name, date, or simply by dragging and dropping. You can copy, paste, delete, move from one folder to another, transfer to and from a computer or another iOS device. You an even chose the photo to use as the cover image for every folder... The interface looks good. Bye bye Photos App.

In my case all photos were a mess - until today: I shot some pictures in the park and transferred them on my iPad when I got home. And miraculously they were all perfectly in order...

I was baffled and started trying to find out what went differently. Well, and now after hours, I believe that the reason (in my case at least) might be following: The albums that were messed up consisted of photos from different cameras. When I uploaded some albums via iTunes which consisted only of images done with my first choice camera all was in order.

To be honest, I don't have any idea why this is as it is. Maybe it helps some of you guys.

Forget my last post. This time I have something that REALLY helped me a lot! The iPad orders photos according to their file name. But not the order "xx (1)" "xx (2)" "xx(3)"... but in the following way: "xx (1)" "xx (11)" "xx (12)" "xx (2)" "xx (22)"...

I downloaded the Amok Exif Sorter (http://www.amok.am/index.php?page=progr&id=9) which gives you the option to rename all files with their capture date and time. ALL my files are in order!

When I import my photos from the cama directly to the iPad, the order is also as it used to be: chronologically correct. The problem is only when importing photo galleries from the computer (Mac or PC) via iTunes. Which is what I do most of the time, because I use the computer as main editing tool, and the iPad as main viewing (and showing) tool.

Which is the weakness of the iPad anyway: communication with the outside world: It is all too complicated, which is also what reviews say.

So, when are you fixing this, Apple?

B.

To angry_phil: I do not understand what that means for normal galleries with files from your camera: they generally have names like "IMG_3547". How would you have to rename the files and what if Apple changes the sort order again one day? Also with galleries of 40 or 80 photos it will be difficult to keep an overview. I have more than 1000 photos on my iPad and will not try to rename them. It will mess up everything - but wait: Apple has already messed up everything in this app!