Apple Photos not sorting in date order - why?

Hello all

I've been sorting out my Photos library on my 2023 M2 Macbook Air running Sequoia 15.4.1 and am running into a problem that, after re-naming files and re-importing them, a number of images are not in date order even though taken on the same camera (even worse if 2 cameras were used on the same day!)

Her's an example. Image 1 shows a file numbered No. 1 with a time stamp of 14.19.19. Image 2 numbered No. 8 with a time stamp of 14.33.57. Therefore No. 8 should naturally follow afterwards.


File No. 1 timed 14.19.19


File No. 8 timed 14.33.57

But see the screenshot of the files as shown in Photos which are clearly out of order. I have tried altering the time slighlty to bring them into order but unless I change earlier images to the day beforehand they stay exactly where they are.


Out of time order images

I'd welcome any thoughts. Is it something in the Sequoia update? The metadata in the file? I'd add that if I export original files to a folder and import into Lightroom, everything shows perfectly correctly as they do also in Luminar Neo - it's just Apple Photos that's playing up.

Any thoughts much appreciated.

Thanks,

John

JohnNewman said:

Hello all

I've been sorting out my Photos library on my 2023 M2 Macbook Air running Sequoia 15.4.1 and am running into a problem that, after re-naming files and re-importing them, a number of images are not in date order even though taken on the same camera (even worse if 2 cameras were used on the same day!)

Her's an example. Image 1 shows a file numbered No. 1 with a time stamp of 14.19.19. Image 2 numbered No. 8 with a time stamp of 14.33.57. Therefore No. 8 should naturally follow afterwards.


File No. 1 timed 14.19.19


File No. 8 timed 14.33.57

But see the screenshot of the files as shown in Photos which are clearly out of order. I have tried altering the time slighlty to bring them into order but unless I change earlier images to the day beforehand they stay exactly where they are.


Out of time order images

I'd welcome any thoughts. Is it something in the Sequoia update? The metadata in the file? I'd add that if I export original files to a folder and import into Lightroom, everything shows perfectly correctly as they do also in Luminar Neo - it's just Apple Photos that's playing up.

Any thoughts much appreciated.

Thanks,

John

Click to expand...

Hi John,

Have a look at Photos>View>Sort>Keep Sorted By Oldest First

P.S. I noticed that macOS and iOS Photos sort differently when two images have the same timestamp.


Photos View command

Love_my_R5 said:

Hi John,

Have a look at Photos>View>Sort>Keep Sorted By Oldest First

P.S. I noticed that macOS and iOS Photos sort differently when two images have the same timestamp.


Photos View command

Click to expand...

Yes, thanks but already checked but to no avail. I'm thinking Photos just has this glitch where it's happy to sort my date but sometimes an issue within the date range.

As I mentioned, I can alter date to the previous day but, apart from being inaccurate, also a pain to have to keep doing.

Thanks though for the suggestion,

John

JohnNewman said:

Love_my_R5 said:

Hi John,

Have a look at Photos>View>Sort>Keep Sorted By Oldest First

P.S. I noticed that macOS and iOS Photos sort differently when two images have the same timestamp.


Photos View command

Click to expand...

Yes, thanks but already checked but to no avail. I'm thinking Photos just has this glitch where it's happy to sort my date but sometimes an issue within the date range.

As I mentioned, I can alter date to the previous day but, apart from being inaccurate, also a pain to have to keep doing.

Thanks though for the suggestion,

John

Click to expand...

I found this article online: how-to-fix-mac-photos-albums-not-sorting-by-date-taken

By the way, Phil Harvey's ExifTool can be used to manipulate image file dates (for example setting the creation and modified dates to the creation date in the EXIF data.

Thanks again. I discovered it's possible to re-arrange photos in albums but not, unfortunately, in the actual Photo Library where Apple's protocols seemingly over-ride the metadata.

So even though the time in the Exif is clearly before another (as in my examples) Photos still do not sort accordingly. And, yes, I tried Exifer and ExifTool but to no avail I'm afraid.

But thanks for your time to advise, much appreciated.

John

Hi, John,

I had a similar problem, and found that while the date and time was correct, the geotagging and time zone was not. I had corrected the geotagging, but that didn't fix the time zone.

This is what I ended up doing:

(1) Select all the affected (out of order) photos.

(2) Image -> Adjust date and time

(3) Change the time zone, but ALSO change the date by one day. (Changing the time zone without changing the date doesn't "take".)

(4) Click "Adjust"

(5) Image -> Adjust date and time

(6) Change the date back to the correct date. My pics are now in date/time order. HTH.

DLR in Spr said:

Hi, John,

I had a similar problem, and found that while the date and time was correct, the geotagging and time zone was not. I had corrected the geotagging, but that didn't fix the time zone.

This is what I ended up doing:

(1) Select all the affected (out of order) photos.

(2) Image -> Adjust date and time

(3) Change the time zone, but ALSO change the date by one day. (Changing the time zone without changing the date doesn't "take".)

(4) Click "Adjust"

(5) Image -> Adjust date and time

(6) Change the date back to the correct date. My pics are now in date/time order. HTH.

Click to expand...

Thank you, I've got a few things going on at the moment but will give this a try asap, probably next week.

Will update and let you know how it goes,

Thanks again,

John