Q: Photos out of chronological order in albums

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?

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.