Photos out of chronological order in albums

tk1ders wrote:

I may be misunderstanding this thread regarding time zones, but I'm confused about that since I thought that if you set the timezone in your camera with your current location, it will automatically adjust to the correct time of day where are standing at that moment. The time of day is most critical to me, since the date is usually always correct.

That's the way it works for me -- basically, the camera adds whatever date & time it is set to at the time the photo is taken, & that doesn't change unless you alter it later on.

I'm not having a problem with that...my problem is I have two different cameras I use at the same time and therefore photos are intermixed depending which camera I use. When I download them now into 'Photos', some appear out of chronological order. I could be viewing my photos and they next photo is completely out of place. This is just aggravating and I cannot even manually reorder them. I'm wondering if I'm 'missing' something? Or is it a bug in Photos?

The order they appear in (& what sort options are available) depend on how you view them. For instance, the "All Photos" view is always ordered by when items are added to the library (not when they were taken), & that order can't be changed. The "Photos" view (the first button in the toolbar or first item in the Sidebar if it is visible) is ordered by when the items were taken & organized into a Years, Collections, & Moments hierarchy. The order in those views can't be changed either, nor can the order of "smart" or any of the system-created albums.

Regular user-created albums default to being sorted by when taken but unlike the others, you can uncheck the "Keep Sorted by Date" item in the "View" menu & manually drag them into whatever order you want. You have to do that individually for each album -- there is no global setting to turn off the date sort.

If you change the date and/or time using the Image > Adjust Date & Time ..." menu item, it won't change the "All Photos" sort order (because that always sorts by date added to the library) or any smart album sort order, but it should change the order in the "Photos" views.

It's all very confusing until you work with the app for while, or at least it was for me. 😕

After reading through this whole thread and feeling confused, I did some tinkering, and found that the answer is quite simple. First, there is no bug in sorting by Photos, at least in v. 1.0.1 (215.65.0). You simply need to make sure that you adjust BOTH the time zone as well as the time. If you import from multiple cameras and/or iDevices, do the adjustment after each import, then if any fine tuning of the time stamp is needed to match the sequence of pictures in the view, you can select all pictures in the "Last Import" view to make that adjustment. Then go on to your next import. Simple as that.

. First, there is no bug in sorting by Photos, at least in v. 1.0.1 (215.65.0).

You can manage to import new photos with the correct sorting, but you have to shift the times of photos taken in a different timezone, and not just tell Photos the name of the time zone.which is completely unintuitive.

The bug I have been referring to is ta different one however. The sorting is incorrect for migrated libraries with photos taken by cameras with different timezone settings. The date & time adjustments applied in Aperture and iPhoto are ignored.

And the second bug is that the times of the photos will be displayed with the wrong time zone name. It is always the name of the current system time, independently of the time zone name set in "Adjust Date & Time".

For example, one photo in my library will show the time like this, when my system time is set to Central European Summer Time:

10:56 CEST

When I switch the system time to a different time zone, for example Cancún - Mexico and restart the Mac, Photos in MacOSX 10.10.4 will show exactly the same times for all my photos , but with a different time zone name: 10:56GMT-5 - the times of all photos have changed be seven hours just by changing the system time.

None of the time zone names are correct, the photo has been taken in Australia.

léonie wrote:

When I switch the system time to a different time zone, for example Cancún - Mexico and restart the Mac, Photos in MacOSX 10.10.4 will show exactly the same times for all my photos , but with a different time zone name: 10:56GMT-5 - the times of all photos have changed be seven hours just by changing the system time.

But the times have not changed -- both show 10:56. I think the CEST or GMT-5 or whatever just indicates the format of the date & time, not a timezone or anything like it seems to. At least that's what happens on my system -- if I change the region in System Preferences > Language & Region, the only thing that happens in the Photos Info window is the date & time format change, but not the date or time.

lnotwell wrote:

First, there is no bug in sorting by Photos, at least in v. 1.0.1 (215.65.0). You simply need to make sure that you adjust BOTH the time zone as well as the time.

From what I can tell, the time zone map & closest city dropdown is just a convenient way to set the date & time by increments corresponding to time zone offsets from the currently indicated one -- note that if you use that, the time (& if necessary the date) update in the "Adjusted" text box to reflect that.

But using the map doesn't actually seem to create a timezone tag -- like I mentioned earlier there is no timezone in the Exif Date-Time tags, & changing the date or time with the map does not add a GPS UTC tag to the file.

My problem is similar, but slightly different. When I import photos from my camera--one day, one location, one time zone--they are imported out of sequence. The first photos loaded were shot in the evening, then some from morning, a few more evening, some afternoon, more evening, then the morning ones again. There's no rhyme or reason to it, just an unholy mess of 712 photos out of order. Anybody got any ideas how to resolve this?

FWIW, I think Apple has overthought Photos and is too cute by half with the whole application. iPhoto worked much more simply and intuitively, and I wasn't left trying to decide if I was having a Moment or Burst or a thrombo. If they want to add an improvement, a toggle to "make this app act like iPhoto" would be fine with me.

My rant is concluded.

Any thoughts on my mishmash issue? TYIA.

I just figured out why my photos are like this, even though I have the option to sort photos in chronological order.. I use my iPhone to take HDR and non-HDR pictures, and TrueHDR as well. Different pictures work out in different apps and I filter later. The iPhone pictures are grouped correctly chronologically, and the TrueHDR pictures are grouped separately and chronologically. Hence the mixup.

Assist with organizing photos in photo album?

I have the same question. I got a new laptop and everything from the old laptop was downloaded. All of the photos are way out of order. Photos I took in 2007 are mixed up with photos from 2010 and so on. Photos is a mess.

Don't know if anyone here still have this problem but I've finally figured the solution that works for me.

I've documented it here on my blog (so that I remember) on how to fix the photos out of chronological order problem. But essentially, it's to use the Photos app's Adjust Date and Time feature to change the timezone WITHOUT changing the date and time itself.

You are looking in All Photos - you want Photos - the top entry in the source list on the top

LN