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Time zone affects pic sort "irrationally"

Hi,


When travelling abroad I usually sort pictures by date and time to keep everything chronologically in order.


The pictures have the date and time format 2012-03-31 18:25:38.

Thereafter some of them have an EEST (my IXUS and my Sony DSC-HX9V) and others a GMT-07:00 (my NIKON) . I understand that these are time zone indicators.


The sort function takes into account the time zones indicated by the EEST and the GMT-07:00 apparently in some way, but it is a bit unclear how. When I look at the sort-order the pictures are not correctly sorted.


1.) I do not seem to be able to sort the pictures correctly.


2.) Hence the ideal sort key would be to forget the EEST and the GMT marks at the end and only sort after the date and time numbers. This does not seem to be possible, but if this would be the case, a manual correction could be done by me for the different time zones. Hence I could solve this mess.


Is there a way for me to correct the existing sort key? (Or, for a start, a way to understand it)?

Pyry

Posted on Apr 28, 2012 4:24 PM

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Posted on Apr 28, 2012 6:13 PM

pyry, could you please give an example, how Aperture sorts your images, and how you would like to have them sorted? Perhaps a screenshot of the browser showing the dates in list view? User uploaded file

My images seem to be sorted correctly with respect to time zones and dates.


Regards

LĂ©onie

11 replies

Apr 29, 2012 1:56 AM in response to léonie

Hi LĂ©onie,

Thanks for your interest in my problem. Hope the picture below is not too small.

Here we go:


User uploaded file


Picture number 3 is a test picture from a breakfast place in Carmel, California

The date of the picture is 20120401@20:59:14 (GMT-7:00)

The true time was a little before 11 AM. The date was April 2.


The picture number 6 is a picture from the road to Yosemite national park.

The date of the picture is 20120402@18:29:32 EEST

This is the right time of the day. The time zone indication is wrong as the camera owner only adjusted for the time difference but not for the time zone when landing in California. (This camera is usually based in Helsinki, Finland)


The picture number 9 is a picture from Santa Barbara, California.

The date of the picture is 20120402@10:48:06 GMT-07:00

The true time was in the afternoon. The date was April 2


Hence all pictures were taken on the same day, Monday April 2. Above the sort key is the date chronologically.

As you can see I scramble to take care of a problem that erupted already before the photosafari started due to erroneous date settings in some of the cameras.

Now I have difficulties to make the adjustments afterwards.


Thanks,

pyry

Apr 29, 2012 3:32 AM in response to pyry

Now, that makes it very clear! That looks like a bug to me 😼


As far as I can see within the same timezone setting (from the same camera) your images are sorted correctly, but not, if the cameras use a different encoding for the timezone. The EEST dates should be treated the same as the GMT-07:00 dates, if my arithmetic is right.


I previously had a similar problem with iPhoto - iPhoto could read the timezone tags in my husband's camera, but not in my cameras, and it was a lot of work to get the images sorted chronologically to create books and slideshows - that's what made me switch to Aperture btw., the "Adjust Timezone" option.


Probably you can get this sorted out by telling Aperture that "EEST" is the same as "GMT-07:00" with

Batch change -> Time Adjustment -> Adjust Time Zone


Make up your mind, if you want to keep "EEST" or "GMT-07:00" and collect the images that need changing in a smart album. Then "Adjust Time Zone" with

Camera's Time is "EEST" and "Actual Time" is "GMT-7" (or vica versa).


And you better try that with copies in a small test project 😝


Cheers

LĂ©onie

Apr 29, 2012 4:51 AM in response to léonie

Thank you LĂ©onie for taking the time!

I will tackle this shortly. I am glad to have a solution.

May I humbly ask what I see when I look at your Kathmandu picture?

I think I see an additional sorting setup comprising colours and codes. If it is not too personal I would truly enjoy to be enlightend with respect to a more advanced system than mine.

Best regards,

pyry

Apr 29, 2012 7:24 AM in response to pyry

May I humbly ask what I see when I look at your Kathmandu picture? ...



Gladly,

on the Kathmandu images you some of the tags I regularly use when structuring my library:


  • Color labels: Those I assign to see at glance who took the picture - my husband, friends, or I. This way it is easy to ensure that I do not only include my own pictures when I make a book or a slideshow - or worse, delete someone elses best shot.
  • ***** Ratings: You see the star ratings I use, when I browse the images after import to delete poor or redundant images. Images labeled with five stars go into smart albums for books, slideshows, or smart webpages.
  • What you do not see in the screenshot are thematic tags: I use keywords to build thematic collections: My webgallery of pictures of light houses, sunsets, wildlife (the big "5"), waterfalls, canyons;
  • And I have my images geocoded with GPS to build regional albums.


But how you tag your images really should depend on your projects, and on the information you need easily to be accessible for searches and smart albums, etc.


Good Luck


LĂ©onie

Apr 29, 2012 10:11 AM in response to pyry

You are welcome, pyry;


Sometimes I feel that I drown in pictures even if I am fairly well organized.

I know that feeling well! Since I got myself the first digital camera!


When I only was shooting on film rolls for slides, I couln't afford to buy too many films, that was easy to manage, but now with auto bracket GB cards - drowning is the right word!


Cheers

LĂ©onie

Time zone affects pic sort "irrationally"

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