Q: iPad photo sort order changed with iOS 5

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.

I found the trick!

What you do is simply switch off the "edit date" collumn of the folder in which you photo's are in. It was a lucky guess, but it works!

Hope it works for you too.

This worked for me too!

Hi pei-yin,

please, which OS you have on your computer? I asking because I cannot find any place with this option on my MacOS.

Thanx

I've just had an update to the bug that I filed with Apple about this, the update says that this problem is fixed in the iTunes 10.6.3 GM

I did some additional testing using my Apple TV (1st generation) and my Windows 7 computer, and this is what I found.

(This likely applies to iPad/iPod/iPhone too).

• Apple TV displays photos in order of their "Date Created" file attribute.
• If the "Date Created" file attribute of all photos in an album is identical, then Apple TV displays the photos in alphabetical order.

This I what I do to make sure that Apple TV displays photos in the order I want them to be in:

• First, I arrange photos in the order I want them to be in. For this, I use Google Picasa, but one could also use FastStone Image Viewer, or any similar tool.
• Then, I bulk rename all the photos, so that their file names are in alphabetical order. I do this from within Picasa, but there are many other freeware file rename tools one could use for this.
• Next, I bulk change the "Date Created" file attribute of the photo files, so that they all have an identical one. For this, I use BatchTouch, freeware available for Windows and Mac.
• Finally, I open iTunes, and sync the photos to my Apple TV.

Note: if they photos were already synced to your Apple TV before you perform the steps above, you may need to this beforehand:

• Open iTunes on your PC, and make sure that the correct photo folder is selected for syncing to your device.
• Using Windows Explorer, navigate to this folder.
• Within it, locate a subfolder called “iPod Photo Cache” ("iPad Photo Cache for iPad syncing) and delete it.

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.

The iPad now sorts the photos by 'date modified' for some strange reason.

Easy way around this if the photos are still on your PC is

Download and install PictureGo (http://www.picturego.nl/)

Start PictureGo and right click on the folder containing the photos

Select 'Reset file dates to picture date taken' (tick 'include subfolders' if there are any)

Start itunes and untick sync photos, select remove photos at pop-up box prompt and apply

Check that photos have gone from iPad

Resync photo folder and the photos should now be back and in date and time order

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