Getting photos in the proper order

urbanaries

I have an issue with this gallery...

http://lynnehulbertphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/4004257

The photos were taken by two people and three cameras, so date taken is not indicative of the true capture order. (I know, I know, sync the cameras, two of the three synced successfully, but not the third, so it's all ruined). I arranged them in the correct order in Lightroom, and exported in sequence starting with number 1.

When I sort the gallery by filename, it starts with file 1, then goes to file 10, 11, 12....then 2, 20, 21, etc. As if it is ALPHABETICAL and not truly numerical or sequential order.

Any help for this? I know that I could sort them by position, but this gallery represents about 10% of this wedding and I really don't want to resort to that, as I've already done this manually in Lightroom! :dunno

Thanks!

jfriend

urbanaries wrote:

I have an issue with this gallery...

http://lynnehulbertphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/4004257

The photos were taken by two people and three cameras, so date taken is not indicative of the true capture order. (I know, I know, sync the cameras, two of the three synced successfully, but not the third, so it's all ruined). I arranged them in the correct order in Lightroom, and exported in sequence starting with number 1.

When I sort the gallery by filename, it starts with file 1, then goes to file 10, 11, 12....then 2, 20, 21, etc. As if it is ALPHABETICAL and not truly numerical or sequential order.

Any help for this? I know that I could sort them by position, but this gallery represents about 10% of this wedding and I really don't want to resort to that, as I've already done this manually in Lightroom!

Thanks!

I've solved this problem in Adobe Bridge (I presume you could do the same in Lightroom), but sorting them the way I want in Bridge and then renaming them with zero padded numbers at the beginning 0001_filename, 0002_filename, etc... Then, it sorts properly in alpha order.

BeachBill

urbanaries wrote:

When I sort the gallery by filename, it starts with file 1, then goes to file 10, 11, 12....then 2, 20, 21, etc. As if it is ALPHABETICAL and not truly numerical or sequential order.

Unfortunately that is how computers sort. Does LR not have the ability to name the files with zero filled numbers?

urbanaries

BeachBill wrote:

Unfortunately that is how computers sort. Does LR not have the ability to name the files with zero filled numbers?

I think I can add zeroes, if I am inferring correctly that would solve the issue? Awesome!

jcdill

urbanaries wrote:

I have an issue with this gallery...

http://lynnehulbertphotography.smugmug.com/gallery/4004257

The photos were taken by two people and three cameras, so date taken is not indicative of the true capture order. (I know, I know, sync the cameras, two of the three synced successfully, but not the third, so it's all ruined).

I had this problem recently as well. We forgot to snyc, and so our 2 main cameras were 2 minutes and 10 seconds off, and the third camera (a friend who is also a good friend of the groom gave me his photos to include in the online album) had his camera in UTC time instead of PST time.

I'm using a MacBook Pro and OS X 10.4. I fixed this by running 2 programs to reset file info and then rename the files. The first program is A Better Finder Attributes. This program has a feature to batch change the file modified time by whatever offset is needed - for the first camera I set it to - 2 minutes 10 seconds, for the second camera I set it to + 7 hours. Then I had it set the file created time to equal the file modified time. NOTE: This doesn't change the time stored in the file's EXIF. (If anyone knows of a good way to change the EXIF in this manner on a Mac, I'm all ears!)

Then I renamed the files using Automator, addging the file created time (in 24 hour format) in front of the existing filename. Be sure to check "use leading zeros ". Then I add the file-created-date in front. The final filename is long, but has a lot of useful information for my purposes:

yyyymmdd-hhmmss-init-filename.ext

The nice part about doing it this way is that it's quick and easy to find photos taken at specific times - e.g. "they cut the cake at 2:30" so those photos will be found at/near yyyymmdd-143000-....

I tried to do all of this within Automator but was unable to find a way to change the time by an offset. If anyone knows of a way to do all of this within Automator, let me know!

jc

jfriend

jcdill wrote:

I had this problem recently as well. We forgot to snyc, and so our 2 main cameras were 2 minutes and 10 seconds off, and the third camera (a friend who is also a good friend of the groom gave me his photos to include in the online album) had his camera in UTC time instead of PST time.

I'm using a MacBook Pro and OS X 10.4. I fixed this by running 2 programs to reset file info and then rename the files. The first program is A Better Finder Attributes. This program has a feature to batch change the file modified time by whatever offset is needed - for the first camera I set it to - 2 minutes 10 seconds, for the second camera I set it to + 7 hours. Then I had it set the file created time to equal the file modified time. NOTE: This doesn't change the time stored in the file's EXIF. (If anyone knows of a good way to change the EXIF in this manner on a Mac, I'm all ears!)

Then I renamed the files using Automator, addging the file created time (in 24 hour format) in front of the existing filename. Be sure to check "use leading zeros ". Then I add the file-created-date in front. The final filename is long, but has a lot of useful information for my purposes:

yyyymmdd-hhmmss-init-filename.ext

The nice part about doing it this way is that it's quick and easy to find photos taken at specific times - e.g. "they cut the cake at 2:30" so those photos will be found at/near yyyymmdd-143000-....

I tried to do all of this within Automator but was unable to find a way to change the time by an offset. If anyone knows of a way to do all of this within Automator, let me know!

jc

I did something similar where I "fixed" the shoot time/date on the other cameras after the fact so that they do sync up. I and another photographer shot a school talent show. We did sync up our clocks, but my daylight savings time setting was off so all my shots were off by an hour. Using the free tool Exifer, I was able to apply a uniform time correction to the time/date taken to all of my shots so that I could then properly sort in EXIF order.