Getting images in chronological order: I came back from a trip with 1700 images taken with three cameras (Canon M5, Canon SX700HS and iPhone 6S). All of them record time/date with...

JMJ2017

I came back from a trip with 1700 images taken with three cameras (Canon M5, Canon SX700HS and iPhone 6S). All of them record time/date with images. When I loaded them into my home computer (iMac with Photos) the did not interleave in chronological order. They stayed in groups by camera. I tried clicking on and off the organize by date button but no difference. Any suggestions as to how I can get them all in chronological order?

Thanks!

Jon Jensen

Hal81 Loc: Bucks County, Pa.

Looks like you got your work cut out for the next couple of days.

Peterff Loc: O'er The Hills and Far Away, in Themyscira.

JMJ2017 wrote:

I came back from a trip with 1700 images taken with three cameras (Canon M5, Canon SX700HS and iPhone 6S). All of them record time/date with images. When I loaded them into my home computer (iMac with Photos) the did not interleave in chronological order. They stayed in groups by camera. I tried clicking on and off the organize by date button but no difference. Any suggestions as to how I can get them all in chronological order?

Thanks!

Jon Jensen

Not sure about the iPhone, but if you use Canon software to download images it can be set to create individual folders by date, and then the image numbers in each folder would give you images organized by date and time, which is close to chronological order. If you haven't deleted images or reformatted your cards you should be able to create that type of structure.

Good luck

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

I use Lightroom.

via the lens Loc: Northern California, near Yosemite NP

JMJ2017 wrote:

I came back from a trip with 1700 images taken with three cameras (Canon M5, Canon SX700HS and iPhone 6S). All of them record time/date with images. When I loaded them into my home computer (iMac with Photos) the did not interleave in chronological order. They stayed in groups by camera. I tried clicking on and off the organize by date button but no difference. Any suggestions as to how I can get them all in chronological order?

Thanks!

Jon Jensen

Not actually sure what Photos will do, but I have not found it be of much use other than to store the occasional snapshot. You may find that you need to switch to another program to achieve your goal. You can re-arrange images and folders in Lightroom and most likely in other software, too.

Georgews Loc: Wellington, New Zealand

Go to file explorer, change view to details and you should see a column showing date modified. Click on that heading and they will be sorted in date order. However, if you have edited them then the date will be changed so do this before editing or copying.

David in Dallas Loc: Dallas, Texas, USA

Georgews wrote:

Go to file explorer, change view to details and you should see a column showing date modified. Click on that heading and they will be sorted in date order. However, if you have edited them then the date will be changed so do this before editing or copying.

I think right clicking on the heading row will allow adding "date taken" to the Details list, and clicking on that will sort the files in that order.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

JMJ2017 wrote:

I came back from a trip with 1700 images taken with three cameras (Canon M5, Canon SX700HS and iPhone 6S). All of them record time/date with images. When I loaded them into my home computer (iMac with Photos) the did not interleave in chronological order. They stayed in groups by camera. I tried clicking on and off the organize by date button but no difference. Any suggestions as to how I can get them all in chronological order?

Thanks!

Jon Jensen

You should be able to put all of them into one folder and sort them by date. That should also sort them by time. I know is quick and easy in Windows, but I don't recall the procedure for a Mac.

http://osxdaily.com/2017/04/20/sort-files-by-date-mac/
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH25361?locale=en_US
https://www.quora.com/On-Macs-Finder-is-there-a-way-to-arrange-files-by-Date-Modified-in-a-single-folder-while-arranging-all-other-folders-by-Name

cthahn

When you want to mix camera and cell phone, what do you expect.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

JMJ2017 wrote:

I came back from a trip with 1700 images taken with three cameras (Canon M5, Canon SX700HS and iPhone 6S). All of them record time/date with images. When I loaded them into my home computer (iMac with Photos) the did not interleave in chronological order. They stayed in groups by camera. I tried clicking on and off the organize by date button but no difference. Any suggestions as to how I can get them all in chronological order?

Thanks!

Jon Jensen

If you're using Windows, open the folder your photos are in, in File Explorer. Make sure you're in Detail view (At the top, click on the View tab, then select Details). Right-click on any of the column headers and in the pop-up list, scroll down to Date Taken, check-mark the box in front of that and click OK.
You now have a column Date Taken with the columns that were already there.
Next, click on the column name and the dates will immediately be sorted in ascending order. Want them backwards? Click on the column header again. That's it. Chronological order, ascending or descending.

johneccles Loc: Leyland UK

That's because images are sorted by name first and then date.

fourlocks Loc: Londonderry, NH

Like most cameras, my Nikon assigns numbers chronologically, as I take the shot. My iMac Photos program loads them by name which, in this case, is the camera-assigned number so they're in chronological order. iMac Photos is a database, not a file system. It can do a bunch of complex database manipulations but it lacks some of the easy manipulations a filing program can do and changing from name order to date order seems to be one of them. I looked under "Preferences" and couldn't find a way to re-sort images but it was a quick search. I'll investigate further but if you find a way, let us all know.

dsmeltz Loc: Philadelphia

In the PC world you simply sort by creation date. But I know! Macs are so "intuitive"! So there MUST be a simple intuitive way of doing it!

Hsch39 Loc: Northbrook, Illinois

I had the same problem in "Photos". Select all photos, under File create New Album. Open New Album and in "View" sort photos by oldest first. It worked for me.

wrangler5 Loc: Missouri

Since I switched from film to digital, my file naming convention for images has been YYYYMMDD HHMMSS.jpg (or whatever format they're in), with time in 24 hour format (hours 00-23). The date and time are taken from the exif data stored with each image. I have Lightroom rename them when they're imported, but before LR I used other photo management tools to do the renaming. Images are actually stored in folders named for the event in question, but their sequence is always available.

One thing that's important, though, is to be sure that all your camera clocks are synchronized. Including the one(s) your wife uses, if she wants to include any of her pix in your collections. So I try to remember, every few months, to get all the cameras together and check their clocks. Including being sure the daylight savings choices are consistent.