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Photos App - 'All photos' out of order

J

Jazz76

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 13, 2015
36
8
Hi All

I quite like the new photos app, but there is one big thing that I can't figure out: The 'All Photos' section is showing all my photos in totally the wrong order. I can't really see any pattern to it. It's pretty frustrating. Does anyone else have this problem? The 'Keep Sorted by Date Added' tick box is greyed out. Gah!
 
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! Of course! I *just* realised that myself, thanks for the reply...
 
Jazz76 said:
Hi All

I quite like the new photos app, but there is one big thing that I can't figure out: The 'All Photos' section is showing all my photos in totally the wrong order. I can't really see any pattern to it. It's pretty frustrating. Does anyone else have this problem? The 'Keep Sorted by Date Added' tick box is greyed out. Gah!
Click to expand...

I know this thread is extremely old but it was driving me crazy in apps that didn't support anything except all photos, so if anyone else is having this problem here's how I fixed it. I'm sure there is a better way but here's how I did it:
Note: This assumes all of your photos have correct EXIF data.
  1. Export all of your photos from the Photos app by dragging them to a folder on your desktop. (This may take a while to process depending on how many there are.)
  2. After making certain every photo you have is backed up, ⌘A in All Photos and delete everything. (This will clear the incorrect ordering out of iCloud Photo Library if you have that too. You can make a backup copy of your library file if this makes you nervous.)
  3. Install the jhead command line utility by running "brew install jhead" in terminal. It may ask to install the Xcode command line utility, in which case you may have to run the command again.
  4. cd into the directory where your photos are stored and run "jhead -ft *.jpg". This will set the file's date to match the date the photo was taken.
  5. After that has completed close terminal and open the folder in finder. Sort the photos by date modified and the oldest photos should be on the top now.
  6. ⌘A, right click, and select "Rename XX items"
  7. Select "Format"
  8. Change Name Format to "Name and Counter"
  9. Change Where to "after name"
  10. Add any prefix you want under Custom Format, I chose "IMG_"
  11. Click rename and leave it alone. This may take a moment depending on how many pictures you have.
  12. Make sure the photos are sorted correctly in finder and import the folder to the Photos app.
Under the review they should be ordered correctly now and you can import them back into Photos. Now if you have an old app that still relies on "All Photos" they won't be out of order. I don't know if Photos imports using Date Modified, the name of the file for import order, or maybe even the last sorting used in Finder; so I always do all three. People have conflicting ideas about which it is. I hope this helps someone, I spent a week trying to get this to work for my own library.
 
I really don't understand why iPhoto had to die while software disasters like iTunes are still alive... I use "Photos" only to collect im photos from 3 different cameras, organise everything by "Month x" albums and copy to my i-devices. Worked like a charm in iPhoto. Not so in "Photos" - because I cannot sort my photos by date, no matter what I tried... It drives me nuts, but till today I haven't found a way to sort all images (from different cameras as mentioned) within one album by date reliably. I'm usually a relaxed person (comes with age), but I utterly hate "Photos"...
 
No I totally get it. I'm so heavily invested in Apple now I have to deal with their sub par photo management if I want to use iCloud. Sad, but I need my pictures organized
 
will528 said:
No I totally get it. I'm so heavily invested in Apple now I have to deal with their sub par photo management if I want to use iCloud. Sad, but I need my pictures organized
Click to expand...
There are alternatives to Photos and iCloud...Apple provides quite a nice system/hardware platform for others to make some products that may meet your needs better. I feel your pain; lotta work for such a common task like sorting by date. Geez.

BTW, I think your method would work with Better Renamer 9 if one doesn't wanna use Terminal and say exiftool to do the renaming.
 
robgendreau said:
There are alternatives to Photos and iCloud...Apple provides quite a nice system/hardware platform for others to make some products that may meet your needs better. I feel your pain; lotta work for such a common task like sorting by date. Geez.

BTW, I think your method would work with Better Renamer 9 if one doesn't wanna use Terminal and say exiftool to do the renaming.
Click to expand...

THANK YOU THAT'S WHAT IT WAS CALLED! I knew there was a better utility with a GUI but I couldn't remember the name.
 
Question:
What about when you add your own folder to Photos, and then sync. Does it also keep them in order? I have renamed then in the method you described but still they are not in the order I want them.
 
Fenway said:
Question:
What about when you add your own folder to Photos, and then sync. Does it also keep them in order? I have renamed then in the method you described but still they are not in the order I want them.
Click to expand...

My understanding of the way that Photos is programmed to sort (I may be wrong this is just from experience), is that Photos sorts by import date. So for example my method worked for me because I had them import in-order to an empty library. Whatever sorting in Finder is the way that photos will add them. But make sure that the Library is empty, or it will just add them in-order to the end of the existing photos.

If I understand correctly, you're talking about adding pictures from a folder to a library with pictures already in it, so they probably won't sort correctly that way. You have to basically download all the pictures, resort them the way you want them, and reupload them all. You can't just do a few pictures, it's all or nothing unfortunately.
 
will528 said:
I know this thread is extremely old but it was driving me crazy in apps that didn't support anything except all photos, so if anyone else is having this problem here's how I fixed it. I'm sure there is a better way but here's how I did it:
Note: This assumes all of your photos have correct EXIF data.
  1. Export all of your photos from the Photos app by dragging them to a folder on your desktop. (This may take a while to process depending on how many there are.)
  2. After making certain every photo you have is backed up, ⌘A in All Photos and delete everything. (This will clear the incorrect ordering out of iCloud Photo Library if you have that too. You can make a backup copy of your library file if this makes you nervous.)
  3. Install the jhead command line utility by running "brew install jhead" in terminal. It may ask to install the Xcode command line utility, in which case you may have to run the command again.
  4. cd into the directory where your photos are stored and run "jhead -ft *.jpg". This will set the file's date to match the date the photo was taken.
  5. After that has completed close terminal and open the folder in finder. Sort the photos by date modified and the oldest photos should be on the top now.
  6. ⌘A, right click, and select "Rename XX items"
  7. Select "Format"
  8. Change Name Format to "Name and Counter"
  9. Change Where to "after name"
  10. Add any prefix you want under Custom Format, I chose "IMG_"
  11. Click rename and leave it alone. This may take a moment depending on how many pictures you have.
  12. Make sure the photos are sorted correctly in finder and import the folder to the Photos app.
Under the review they should be ordered correctly now and you can import them back into Photos. Now if you have an old app that still relies on "All Photos" they won't be out of order. I don't know if Photos imports using Date Modified, the name of the file for import order, or maybe even the last sorting used in Finder; so I always do all three. People have conflicting ideas about which it is. I hope this helps someone, I spent a week trying to get this to work for my own library.
Click to expand...
[doublepost=1490497428][/doublepost]Thanks Apple, pays fortune for your hardware and then have to try and work out for ourselves how to make your useless software work!
 
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