Photos out of chronological order in albums

UTC is not a timezone.

UTC is the basis used to define timezones by offsets to UTC and it used to be interchangeable with GMT. I strongly prefer UTC to GMT, because a time specified in UTC does not vary according to silly daylight saving offsets.

You are right, UTC is not a time zone, but it is a well defined measure of time and offered in many Apple menus where you can set the time basis for your clocks. If you know a date and time in UTC the time a photo has been taken is well defined. Therein no need to know where the phot has been taken to get the photos in a chronological order.

After all, how many people really want to have to convert everything from UTC to local time to tell if a photo was taken in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening, or at any other time of day?

Is that what you want to know about your photos? I want to know if one photo has been taken before or after a photo and get them into the correct chronological sequence. To have all photos from all cameras correctly sorted is much more important to me.

l if a photo was taken in the morning, at lunchtime, in the evening, or at any other time of day?

And that is exactly what is no longer possible in my migrated Aperture and iPhoto libraries, because Photos did not the migrate the time zone settings for the iPad, iPhone, iPod photos. The photos from my Lumix and Canon cameras are the only ones where i can still tell the correct times, because I know the cameras have been set to UTC, independent of the time zone names Photos is showing now.

Although the discussion of timezones is appropriate to those discussing date sorting, the initial posting also mentioned that manual reordering is not working. This is perhaps the most frustrating thing about this update.

I've a shared album and the View > Keep Sorted by Date menu item is disabled. Fine, manual sorting is also not an option.

This is not a stream feature. Shared albums are "albums". One would expect that picts in an album can be manually reordered. In any album. If this is not the intent then call it a shared stream for goodness sake.

Detect my level of dissatisfaction with this version? Yes, I'm frustrated. I've a story to tell in a shared album and I'd really, really like to control how that story gets told by ordering the darn pictures.

This is not a stream feature. Shared albums are "albums". One would expect that picts in an album can be manually reordered. In any album. If this is not the intent then call it a shared stream for goodness sake.

That is exactly the problem. Shared Photo streams are now called "Shared albums" but they are still the old shared photo streams and behaving like streams. It is just a bad case of playing with names. Shared albums are ordered by the date added and there is no way to rearrange the photos in the shared album.

léonie wrote:

UTC is the basis used to define timezones by offsets to UTC and it used to be interchangeable with GMT. I strongly prefer UTC to GMT, because a time specified in UTC does not vary according to silly daylight saving offsets.

Silly or not, timezones based variable geopolitical conventions, not UTC, is the preferred standard for local time all over the world.

If you know a date and time in UTC the time a photo has been taken is well defined.

But not the time of day. For that you must know the location. So for example, if I want to see photos of sunsets or of parades or of any other event associated with a local time of day, I need to consider the location.

And that is exactly what is no longer possible in my migrated Aperture and iPhoto libraries, because Photos did not the migrate the time zone settings for the iPad, iPhone, iPod photos.

As I said, I do not understand what you mean by "migrate the time zone settings." The only timezone related info I know about is the previously mentioned "GPSDateStamp" embedded in the photo itself by GPS-enabled cameras like those in iPhones. As far as I know, together with the embedded local date-time Exif metadata & an external database to correct for time-of-year & year-to-year variations, this is what Photos, iPhoto, or any similar application uses to calculate a timezone for the photo. If for whatever reason a GPS-enabled camera somehow is not set to the local time, this will cause the GPS date stamp to be wrong relative to that time, which obviously will cause the calculated timezone to be wrong as well.

As I said, I do not understand what you mean by "migrate the time zone settings." The only timezone related info I know about is the previously mentioned "GPSDateStamp" embedded in the photo itself by GPS-enabled cameras like those in iPhones.

And again, I am not talking about the image file format and EXIF data, but the contents of the metadata of image versions modelled in the photo libraries.

iPhoto, Aperture, Photos all import image files to the library and the database creates image versions from them with associated metadata that we add to the versions. These are stored in the database files and only copied to the original image files if we force this. And. at least for me, the most important information I add to the imported image files is the precise time when the photo has been taken by specifying the time zone setting of the camera. This information is stored in the library. Photos drops this information when migrating the libraries, and all times will be displayed with the time zone name used when migrating the library and photos taken in different time zones on the same day are no longer sorted correctly in the migrated library. I call this a buggy library migration, and if it were intentional, it should be documented in the support documents. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204478

As far as I know, together with the embedded local date-time Exif metadata & an external database to correct for time-of-year & year-to-year variations, this is what Photos, iPhoto, or any similar application uses to calculate a timezone for the photo. If for whatever reason a GPS-enabled camera somehow is not set to the local time, this will cause the GPS date stamp to be wrong relative to that time, which obviously will cause the calculated timezone to be wrong as well.

iPhoto and Aperture never used the GPS tags in the photos of digital cameras to derive the time zone of the photo but the current system time of the moment of import. In Aperture we can set the camera time zone and the actual time zone in the Import panel. In iPhoto we can use "Adjust Date &Time" to correct the time according to the time zone, but not the time zone.

Photos does not use the GPS either, or it would not show each and every photo with the time zone of the current system time.

It pretends to handle time zones by allowing to set the time zones in the Adjust Date and Time panel, but when I name the time zone there, the info panel will still display GMT+2, while I am in Germany.

léonie wrote:

And again, I am not talking about the image file format and EXIF data, but the contents of the metadata of image versions modelled in the photo libraries.

I am sorry but I am really struggling to understand what you mean by any of this. What exactly are these modeled (??) image versions, where are they stored in the libraries, & how does their metadata differ from that which is stored in the Exif metadata embedded in the original file?

You said the database creates versions from them "with associated metadata that we add to the versions." Where are these versions stored & how do they differ from the modeled versions or from the original master files? You say they are stored in the database files, but at least on my systems the database files are far too small to store modified versions of more than a few of the originals.

You said, "These are stored in the database files and only copied to the original image files if we force this." How exactly do we do that? Is the method or the results different in Photos from those in iPhoto or Aperture? How do I set the timezone of the camera in iPhoto or Photos & where exactly is this stored in the library, other than in the Exif metadata? Why is it that if I change the date & time in either app & export the file its date & time metadata includes that change? I get the same results with files migrated from my iPhoto library -- if I change the date & time in iPhoto prior to migration, that change is preserved in the migrated Photos library. You seem to be implying that it is not, at least for you, but if that is what you mean I cannot duplicate that behavior.

For me at least, the time displayed in the Photos Info window is always system time, but if I change that everything changes by the same relative amount in the Info window, so I do not see how this interferes with the chronology of anything.

Basically, as long as I set the camera time to local time or if I forget to do that use the adjustment function in either iPhoto or Photos to correct for that, I don't have any issues like those you describe. Perhaps there is a bug in how Photos handles migrating Aperture libraries that accounts for the difference, but I suspect that instead it has something to do with how you are trying to use UTC as a substitute for timezones.

Basically, as long as I set the camera time to local time or if I forget to do that use the adjustment function in either iPhoto or Photos to correct for that, I don't have any issues like those you describe. Perhaps there is a bug in how Photos handles migrating Aperture libraries that accounts for the difference, but I suspect that instead it has something to do with how you are trying to use UTC as a substitute for timezones.

It is not limited to the UTC setting. All my iPad and iPhoto photos, that have been taken with the device set to the local time according to the time zone and tagged with GPS by the device are also showing incorrect time zones.

Are you displaying the time zone names with the dates in Photos?

For example, this photo has been taken in Alaska with the iPad and imported while still in Alaska.

Photos is displaying the time as 16:27CEST - our current time in Germany.

The Aperture library I migrated the photo from is showing the correct time zone, as I set it when I imported from the iPad:

You may not notice the problem, if you do not display the time zone names in the info panels. Then you will only notice an incorrect sorting, if the photos have been imported from different cameras with a different time base.

I could not get Photos to use the correct time zone at all, even by setting the time zones again after I migrated the library: It still is showing the time zone as CEST and sorting accordingly.

The Aperture library I migrated the photo from is showing the correct time zone, as I set it when I imported from the iPad:

But that is not the correct timezone for Alaska Daylight Time (AKDT), which was in effect at that location on that date; it should be GMT-8. If you set it to the wrong timezone for the photo's location, it should not be much of a surprise if it does not sort properly.

Notwithstanding the excellent discussions regarding time zones and other good technical details, your point is well taken! I have exactly the same problem. When you import photos, they go into the default All Photos album which sorts by date added and there seems to be no changing that. This might work well for iPhone users who automatically upload their photos but it is useless for people with digital cameras who by definition upload their photos manually. Secondly, there are bugs in the smart "moments" sorting. I have many photos that are completely out of order by days, weeks even. I interleave photos from 2 different cameras plus the iPhone so I don't know if that contributes but there is definitely a problem. All of these photos are properly time-tagged.

I fixed this by creating a new album (not smart album) and put all of my photos in it and they are now actually sorted by date. Now I just have to figure out how to automatically add all new imported images to this new album. Of course every time I go into my new album, Photos can't remember where I left off so I have to scroll through my 40,000+ photos to get to where I want to be.

Once again, Apple tries to make too many decisions for us and we end up wasting lots of time trying to get back to where we started before the upgrade. And, how about fixing the bugs - or at least acknowledging them? And why did you have to get rid of our events with this upgrade???

You mean, because Aperture is showing GMT-07 and not GMT-08? That is one of the pitfalls when crossing borders and trying to keep the cameras set to local time. The picture was taken directly before crossing the border between Yukon and Alaska at White Pass close to Skagway, so the Aperture entry is correct. And would not explain anyway why Photos is showing each and every timezone as CEST = GMT+2

I fixed this by creating a new album (not smart album) and put all of my photos in it and they are now actually sorted by date.

Why not use a smart album? It will also be sorted by capture date.

Use a smart rule that will always be true, like "date is after ...." or "Photo is not hidden".

The second version - photo is not hidden will have the added advantage that the new "All Photos" album will not reveal your hidden photos like the built-in "All Photos" album does.

If the photo was taken in the Tongass National Forest in August of 2013, then the Aperture entry showing GMT-7 is wrong because that is in Alaska. If it was taken near White Pass summit, it was in Canada & the location is wrong.

I trust the GPS that the iPad received on the train, but the iPad may not have noticed that it already was in Alaska, because their was no free Wi-Fi on the White Pass train, so it could not connect to Apple's servers to adjust the time. But the time with the time zone setting of the iPad is the one that is shown in Aperture and the one that I want to see in Photos after the library has been migrated, not the time zone of Hamburg/Germany.

léonie wrote:

But the time with the time zone setting of the iPad is the one that is shown in Aperture and the one that I want to see in Photos after the library has been migrated, not the time zone of Hamburg/Germany.

When was the photo actually taken, in local time, whichever timezone it was in?