Q: iPad photo sort order changed with iOS 5

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.

Thank you for the test. If I understand you well I must using samba protocol and wait to fix iTunes.

Yes you must use Samba with the dirsort VFS module until iTunes is fixed.

I've reported the problem to Apple and the bug id is 11025939 I've no idea if or when this will be fixed.

The text that follows is from another discussion and I'm pasting it here because it seemed to do the trick for some people. Any comments?

Original post by "954G":

After trying everything here, nothing worked for me.

So after looking at the support article here http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4221?viewlocale=en_US 

When you sync photos from your computer to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, the photos may be sorted on your device in a different order from how they are sorted on your computer. Your device will look for the following EXIF tags within your pictures:  1    Capture Date 2    Date Time Digitized 3    Date Time Original 4    Last Modified 

I looked into my Fastone Image Viewer software and found you can 

1. order your pics in the folder 

2. batch rename and it will rename and number them in the oder you made the files

3. delete all jpeg EXIF data (batch) 

4. add/change photo time stamp exif (batch) 

So this is how I did it (in Vista64)

Get a copy of Fastone image viewer, its free. 

In pictures, make folder "for Ipad", then you can set up all the sub folders you want (I did this with copys of the original folders for safety and later reference) Delete the ipod photo cache, if its in the folder and/or the folder above it 

In Fastone, navigate to the folder, i'll use "my pets" for example

1 Arrage the photos in the order you want (I could pre arrange them in the windows folder also)

2 Then select all, right click, tools, remove jpeg meta data, check the box, hit apply.

3 Next, select all, right click, tools, change timestamp, in the drop down box select (EXIF Timestamp date time photo taken), then select specify date time, use what ever date you want, hit apply.

4 Next, select the first photo in the line up, then select all, right click, tools, batch rename 

You will see the files in the original sort order the computer used on the left, on the right you will see them in the order you placed them in. Then select Use Filename Template, Where it says Template enter the name you want for all of them, lets say, mypets#####, this will rename and number them in the order you set up.  mypets00001, mypets00002 .........  You can click the preview icon next to the rename button to see what your results are going to be. So click Rename,

Then click Yes (this way it will rename the files and leave them in the folder) 

DONE!!!! 

Open Itunes, select the folders you want and sync. 

After organizing the pics, its just a couple of mins to apply the changes to all the folders. And when I add new photos to a folder, just drop them were you want, and repeat. 

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.

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.

100% agree removing the exif date from photos is not a good idea at all, this is a bug somewhere between iTunes and the iOS photos app, all I've done is find the cause and offer a work around.

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.

Correct, Photos app shows them in the filesystem order (this is not always the same as filename order) they where synced in where as the iPhoto app correctly shows them in EXIF date order.

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.

Today I received AppleTV 3.

And what shall I say, same mess with photo order.

unbelievable!

Best thing would probably be if several magazines wrote this in their iPad3 and Apple TV reviews!