iPad photo sort order changed with iOS 5

2xboxbmliphone: I am not sure, that Apple fixed this issue. I have latest version of iTunes and iOS 5.1.1 as well, but I have still a problem with order of photos saved on network drive. Connection between my MBP and network drive is via AFP protocol.

Edit: this is crazy... I synced the same photo folder to my iPad3 and iPhone4. For iPad is valid my answer above, BUT in iPhone are photos sorted right. I tried sync some other folders and they are ordered wrong in both iDevices.

(iPod photo cache was deleted)

Based on this I must using still Photo Manager Pro.

Well, perhaps this is only true for iphone... I did state that I am 3GS.. I know this thread was originally for ipad. I came across it while searching for this issue way back... I think was only one I could find. Maybe I should have started one of my own. Sorry....

Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!

After only a few days - well, 7 or 8 months they fixed an issue that probably took 2 hours of programming, maybe less. What a user- friendly company :-)

I removed all faulty albums from my iPAD 2, (the ones where chronological order matters!) and resynced them. It is now as good as in autumn 2011. User sort order, moving around photos with one finger on the iPAD? No... different orders like sizes, name or whatever... Nope. Nothing, nada. But at least they now have ONE working sort order, the chronological.

One luck user from Germany.

Bernie

Jus downloaded the latest iTunes update an my iPod Touch photos synced back into the order of "date taken"...YEEESSS!!! THank u Apple :-D....however, as stated by xboxbmliphone, this post was originally for iPad.

However, I did notice when I deleted 1 of my folders "completely" from my Touch then re-synced it, the photos were in order of date, but when adding more 2 the album again, the order messed up.......something 2 improvise with...

Yep...problem solved for me and iPad !

Downloaded iTunes 10.6.3, connected iPad to MBP, ran iTunes sync with photo files blank selected (to clear pics from iPad), ran iTunes sync with all files selected.

Perfect and quite fast for 5700+ pics. All now in original folders and in date taken sequence. Sigh.......

Oh, oh...I do NOT want my photos in date taken sequence. I have sorted them on my PC in the order I want and then renamed them so the name order is correct. If getting the new version of iTunes goes and puts them in date taken sequence that will be totally wrong!! So I assume I cannot update my iTunes (currently 10.6.1.7) if I want to maintain the correct order.

What a mess. When will Apple get this right!! I was planning on gertting something like Photo Shack Pro for other reasons and I understand that it allows me to specify the sort order. I guess that could solve my problem. But really...........

So the pictures are in order by date, but what about the albums? I have about 50 albums, and they are NOT sorted by album name as they used to be. When you choose whether to sync all photos or certain albums only, the album names are listed on the screen by album name in alphabetical order, but they don't sync that way. They are in some random order. I updated to latest version of itunes, then chose zero albums to sync, let it clear, and then selected all albums to sync. Should I have done an additional step?

Most of my albums have the date as prefix before the name so they appear in date order, which is what I want. Over the years I have got a few albums without the date and they appear in alpha order after the dated albums. Seems yours are behaving differently so I wonder whether the initial zero sync actually worked and removed all your pics from your iPad? The steps you have followed worked for me.

Well we all agree that Apple should give us custom order option for the photos app.

But meanwhile I bought a 2$ app ''Photosync'' that at least let me sort my album in Newest First or Oldest First !

The app do not create albums, it just use your album and let you choose the order Newest or oldest first !

It also let you move your photos between ios device and mac and pc all with wifi !

It's a pretty cool app !

Tiredoldkiwi:

I have used the procedure for both my iPhone and iPad, and made sure that all photos were deleted before re-syncing. The only photos left were a few on the camera roll. In each case, the photo albums once again did the syncing in the "old" incorrect order. The one item which might be different is that on my PC I use Photoshop Elements, and not just Windows folders.

Perhaps I need to delete the the iPod Photo Cache folder which is located in "My Folders" used by Photoshop Elements. Can anyone comment as to whether that is appropriate/necessary?

Since this post, I have tried removing photos from the iPhone and iPad, then deleting the iPod Photo Cache folders, and re-syncing. Still puts photo albums in non-alphabetical sequence. Has anyone got this working properly that is using Windows and Photoshop Elements?

As far as I can tell, it remains totally random. The organization on the iPad has nothing to do with how it may have been organized on the PC. So I got Photo Shack so I can organize my photos and videos right on the iPad any way I want, without having to duplicate anything, resync with my PC, etc. It runs off of the photos already synced there and just organizes them for you.

I've also been struggling with this on my Ipad 3 / Windows 7. I performed a test where I created a folder and copied 2 photos into it, an old one and a new one. I renamed the old file to 1111 and the new file to 0000, so the new file would sort first if it was by name, or last if it was by date.

The first time I synced, the files showed up in name order, but the next time I synced, they changed to date order.

So there's is something strange definitely going on, and it's not even consistent between syncs. My suspicion is that on the first sync the files are dicovered and added in name order, but then the exif or file date data is read into the database, and then on the next sync that is applied.

The solution may be to have all the dates and names in the correct order, so there are no conflicts between them.

In addition to the steps above, I forget to mention that also the "Date Taken" in the EXIF-metadata needs to be set to an identical value for all photos. To do this, I use FastStone Image Viewer. Using this tool, I just delete all EXIF-data of the photos I want to sync to my Apple TV. Select the photos you want to work on, go into the Tools-menu and select Remove JPEG metadata.

Note: this action will also delete all other info which is stored along with the photo, such as camera make, etc. If it is important to you to keep such metadata intact, use another tool which is capable of modifying EXIF dates.