Images out of order when sorted by "Date Taken"

T. Bombadil

Has anyone else noticed that sorting images by "Date Taken" doesn't always work?

Sometimes I like to include a short burst (2 or 3 images) taken of a Soccer collision. I find the SmugMug image sorting can't always get these in the correct order. My speculation is that because the image time stamps are within a fraction of a second of each other, the sort algorithm doesn't have much to go on.

I don't want to use manual sort, because I want the general flow of the gallery to be start of game to finish (and might upload more images later, intending that they be placed in the correct time frame).

A possible solution would be for SmugMug to choose the image order on the basis of File Name if "Date Taken" is ambiguous.

Should I put a feature request somewhere?

Allen

Sort by filename is one of the options in gallery settings.
Any sort option in gallery settings will override organizer.

T. Bombadil

Allen wrote: »

Sort by filename is one of the options in gallery settings.
Any sort option in gallery settings will override organizer.

Thanks for the thought, but sort by file name is not a solution. Sort by file name will be correct for (most) any handful of images taken close together, but will incorrectly place many images from late in the game at the beginning of the gallery if the image count "rolled over" during that game.

pilotdave

T. Bombadil wrote: »

Thanks for the thought, but sort by file name is not a solution. Sort by file name will be correct for (most) any handful of images taken close together, but will incorrectly place many images from late in the game at the beginning of the gallery if the image count "rolled over" during that game.

I highly recommend using some kind of photo management tool like lightroom to rename your files when you import. If you ever need to find an old file, it's a lot easier if they all have unique filenames.

Dave

mrneutron

Please email the help desk using the email address we have on file and a link to the gallery where you have the burst images. We'll take a look.

T. Bombadil

pilotdave wrote: »

I highly recommend using some kind of photo management tool like lightroom to rename your files when you import. If you ever need to find an old file, it's a lot easier if they all have unique filenames.

Dave

hmmm. Interesting. What naming scheme do you use? LR will index them somehow?

Hikin' Mike

T. Bombadil wrote: »

hmmm. Interesting. What naming scheme do you use? LR will index them somehow?

I use Bridge to rename my files: 'location-MMDDYY-sequentialnumber.jpg'. Example: 'yosemite-052514-01.jpg'.

T. Bombadil

mrneutron wrote: »

Please email the help desk using the email address we have on file and a link to the gallery where you have the burst images. We'll take a look.

Will do. Thank you.

Dcmack

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

I use Bridge to rename my files: 'location-MMDDYY-sequentialnumber.jpg'. Example: 'yosemite-052514-01.jpg'.

Similarily, I use LR to rename my images, using the format yyyymmdd-hhmm-originalfilename. As with Mikes format, this allows me to sort all images based on filename.

T. Bombadil

mrneutron wrote: »

Please email the help desk using the email address we have on file and a link to the gallery where you have the burst images. We'll take a look.

Received a nice reply informing me that my speculation is correct: bursts of images can't be sorted by time.

I would like to see the sorting algorithm look to file name when the date info can't distinquish images - but I suppose that might increase processing overhead to fix an unusual problem.

The real problem being that filenames are not _always_ a good proxy for date/time taken, especially when a gallery spans multiple days/events (so the possibility of filename counter "rolling over" is much higher).

T. Bombadil

Hikin' Mike wrote: »

I use Bridge to rename my files: 'location-MMDDYY-sequentialnumber.jpg'. Example: 'yosemite-052514-01.jpg'.

I may give that a shot, thanks.

T. Bombadil

Dcmack wrote: »

Similarily, I use LR to rename my images, using the format yyyymmdd-hhmm-originalfilename. As with Mikes format, this allows me to sort all images based on filename.

Thanks. That would fix my problem.