Q: mac photos sort pictures by date taken

All Photos album is sorted by date added. The other system albums and the Photos Timeline are sorted by the date of the photo. There is no option to change this. Only user created albums can be sorted either by date of the photo or manually by unchecking the preference of date.

Correct - there are no other sorting options - tell Apple your desires - https://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html

LN

odyssey95 wrote:

I've got lots of examples of photos sprinkled throughout my "all photos" area where the pics taken at event 1 are slightly mixed with pics taken at event 2 even though the dates tagged on the photos are correct and are years apart and each event's photos were each imported all at once, respectively.  weird.

It may be less weird if you think of "All Photos" as a special purpose album that might better have been named "Import History" or something like that. There really is no need to use it, other then when you want to see your photos & videos organized by the date they were added to the library. For instance, you might want to do that after doing several imports. The "Last Import" album only shows you the items from the most recent import, so it would be of no use if you were looking for something imported prior to that.

That's from the initial import and all future imports will be as photos are added.

You're welcome

I have the same question, but am not able to understand the response well enough. Specifically, what/where is "photos timeline" that is referenced in the reply? I don't see it as a sorting option, or as an alternate album. I upload between my dslr and my iphone, which consistently leaves me with two batches of photos misplaced by the amount of time that elapsed between taking pictures and uploading them. The date stamps are correct. Is there an alternate to the "all photos" sorting? I can't find it.

bilawing wrote:

Is there an alternate to the "all photos" sorting? I can't find it.

Try the "Photos" view (command+1). That is the one with the three levels, Years, Collections, & Moments.

Thank you for the reply. I know exactly what you are suggesting, as it is the default hierarchy on my iphone, but I can't find that on my laptop (running 10.10.3). Selecting Photos brings up all pictures in the "all photos" arrangement; but I cannot find a way to access the "Years/Collections/Moments" set of choices. It must be simple and I'm missing something, but I don't know what it is. I have at the top of the page four options: photos/shared/albums/projects, and none of them help me to access the "years/collections/moments" set of choices.

Thank you, I found it; moving to the sidebar, I was able to select the album, and then move pictures at will. This is what I needed.

bilawing wrote:

I have at the top of the page four options: photos/shared/albums/projects, and none of them help me to access the "years/collections/moments" set of choices.

The first option at the top ("Photos") takes you to the Years/Collections/Moments views, as does using the keyboard shortcut command+1 or choosing "Photos" from the View menu -- it is the first item on that menu. The four top options disappear when you use the Sidebar, but the keyboard shortcut & View menu items still work.

This may also be of assistance if, like me, you have found that all your previous iPhoto pictures are now apparently scattered at random throughout newPhotos.

In the navigation panel which shows all the folders, there is also 'iPhoto events' - I have just discovered that all the previous 'events' are stored in chronological order, which is a great help for the past.  (I hadn't "foldered" all my photos  when I upgraded to Yosemite and hence newPhotos).  It won't help with photos taken since, but it's useful for the older stuff.

The only way I found to do this was by exporting the photos you want sorted by date taken, then importing them into iPhoto, do the sort there and then re-import them into Apple's Photos applicaation.  Awkward but it works. Hope you kept iPhoto around.

All Photos can not be sorted any way except by data added - Moments is sorted by Photo date - and user albums can be sorted by date added ascending or descending or by title - and your work flow is not only awkward and difficult but causes data loss - two or more recompressions minimum and if done wrong even more

LN

Hi Larry.  I want to sort an album of roughly 1000 photos and put them in order of date taken.  You evidently don't like my proposed method.  I know the method works because I just did it.  Do you know of a better way?

Andy