It's ridiculous that there is no ability to sort photos in an album by date and time taken. I have imported photos from multiple cards, from two cameras taking photos at the same time, and there is no way to sort the pics so the photos appear in true chronological order. This needs to be added back to Photos, I believe it was available in iPhoto.
iMac (27-inch, Late 2013), iOS 9.2.1
In Photos for Mac you can sort photos by the date and time taken. This has been introduced with the update to El Capitan. Which version of Photos are you running?
If you select any of your albums and ctrl-click it, you can sort it by the titles, or by oldest first or newest first.
Or is the problem, that the sort order is incorrect?
Then you may need to adjust the date and time for the photos from the different camera cards. If you imported the photos while you were in different time zones, Photos is interpreting the dates differently. It will use the timezone of the current system time at the moment the photos are imported to interpret the dates on the cards.
I've made an app called iSortPhoto. Although it works with files instead of solving the issue inside Photos, it may help if you absolutely need those photos sorted out. Let me know if that helps or not.
<I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.>Critical to note that this CAN NOT be used in conjunction with Photos - only on photos outside of Photos - if you were to run it on photos within Photos you would destroy the Photos library rendering it unusable
LN
How can you run it on Photos's photos?
Again
Critical to note that this CAN NOT be used in conjunction with Photos - only on photos outside of Photos - if you were to run it on photos within Photos you would destroy the Photos library rendering it unusable
LN
Thanks for the quick response. I upgraded to El Capitan, and I have it selected to sort by Oldest First. However, it is using the time of import instead of the time the picture was taken. In other words, it seems there is no way to import photos from two different cards and mix them up to sort by overall date, since everything on one card will be imported prior to anything on the other card.
I think I worked it out...although I adjusted the date and time on the photos to synchronize the cards, the time zone was also being used when sorting. Since we were six time zones away, this led to pics from one card displaying six hours earlier than they should have relative to the other card. I readjusted the date and time and clicked the right time zone, while not actually changing the time. This solved the problem.
Finally!
When you import photos the date and the time on the card will be read as a date and time in the current timezone you are in as set in the System preferences > Date&Time..
So you have either to use "Adjust Date and Time" if you import the photos while the system time of your computer is set to a different timezone or be sure to import while in the timezone of the camera.
Because it is so easy to forget to set the timezone of the camera immediately when crossing the border, I never change the time settings in the camera at all. All cameras will always record the date and time in UTC, regardless of where I am, and when I am importing photos I know exactly what the timezone of the camera has been.
I have imported photos from multiple devices where I have assiduously changed the date and time to reflect the changing time zones for each device. Photos still stores and displays them by date sorted by import rather than all imports sorted by date.
So I have photos taken on the same day and date stamped correctly but not sorted by Photos correctly.
How can I address this to get the photos for each day to display in true date AND time order?
Many thanks
read the solution
When you import photos the date and the time on the card will be read as a date and time in the current timezone you are in as set in the System preferences > Date&Time..
So you have either to use "Adjust Date and Time" if you import the photos while the system time of your computer is set to a different timezone or be sure to import while in the timezone of the camera.
And tell Apple about the issue - it makes thing very confusing with multiple camera's and IOS devices -- http://www.apple.com/feedback/photos.html
LN
Thanks for this prompt reply Larry - it is most helpful.
I will certainly log the problem with Apple because it seems that my careful planning of changing the time on each device as I moved timezones has been undone by the Apple logic in Photos on my Macbook when I came home to the UK to load them all into a central source.
I am now using "Adjust Date and Time" to bring them into line where necessary, but I may consider deleting and reloading from source as fortunately, I did not delete the photos on the source devices.
Many thanks again
PES
you are welcome
LN
I am a little confused on how to adjust the time settings. For example, when I travel to Epurpose I adjust my camera time to reflect the local time. If I use my iPad or iPhone the date and time is adjusted automaticaly. When I return home, I download the photos onto my Mac, how do I ensure that the original date and time are attached to the photo? Thanks for your assistanc.
Before importing set the system time to the time in the country where you took the photos
LN
Hi LarryHN i have been having this same issue but my photos have already been imported. My Local time is Sydney Australia but i have thousands of photos i have taken in the USA, Canada, UK and Ireland. IF i were to put these photos on individual memory cards, and change my SYSTEM time on the computer and REIMPORT and change the time back again would this work?
Thanks in advance
You could simply export the photos to a folder and reimport from that folder after changing the system time. But you need to restart the Mac or force quit the Finder to be sure Photos will see the changed time. That will be a lot of trouble for several countries.
And you would lose any edits you already applied. Do your photos have GPS assigned? Or can you isolate the photos for each country by a data range rule?
Then create a smart album for the photos of each trip by searching for the photos from that country by the country name or by "Date is in the range". For example for photos with GPS:
Now adjust the Timezone of the photos in this smart album with the command "Image > Adjust Date and Time". At the bottom of this panel you can set the timezone.
Need to sort photos by date and time taken
