Sort by capture time not working

[Marcus Schneider94702]

Hello,

I'm new to Lightroom. I migrated over a 67k photo library from Aperture and am just getting used to using LR. First things first... I cannot figure out how in the world LR is sorting my photos. It is set to sort by capture time, but the dates are all over the place.

In the (LR-created) folders, which are labeled by date, the photos are sorted properly. But in the hundred or so collections (Aperture: projects) that migrated over--which is where I work--the sort order seems almost random, even though the capture time in metadata is clear as day. I've looked through quite a few threads in this forum that point to videos as the culprit for this problem, but these are plain photos. Here is a partial screenshot:

Any ideas??

Marcus

[Just Shoot Me]

Take it off Capture time then put it back on Capture time.

Look in the Metadata section for the Date Time Original and Date Time Digitized. I suspect the dates and times displayed at the bottom of the images is not the actual capture time.

[johnrellis]

To build on Just Shoot Me's reply: If changing the sort order to something else and then back to Capture Time doesn't help, then go to the Metadata panel (Window > Panels > Metadata).    Look at two photos that are out of order in the grid.   Do the capture dates under their thumbnails match the capture dates shown in the Metadata panel?

If they don't match, that indicates that there was a problem in the conversion, most likely that LR had problems reading the capture date from the photo's metadata.  LR has some longstanding bugs in sort order in that situation, and we can drill in to figure out the best way to handle it.

If they do match, that's a bit more of a mystery.

[Marcus Schneider94702]

Thanks for the replies. I realized that it is the first set of photos in each collection that are out of order, which come from a number of different cameras and phones, and when it gets to the pictures from my main Fuji camera they are in order. With these out-of-order pictures, I can't see any capture date displayed in the panel on the right. In fact, I can't figure out how to view that metadata field. It's just not there. When I switch the metadata drop-down menu on the right to IPTC, I can see a "date created" field, which is blank. But under none of the drop down menus is there a "capture date."

I'm guessing this means that the capture date was stripped from these non-Fuji photos somehow. But then why does the capture date show up right under the preview image (which I turned on under View Options)?? The correct dates are right there, they are just being ignored in the sort.

[johnrellis]

With these out-of-order pictures, I can't see any capture date displayed in the panel on the right.

If the Metadata panel doesn't show a capture time, then LR wasn't able to read the capture time from the photo's metadata, most likely because the photo didn't have a recorded capture time.  LR gets very confused at that point, showing some other date under the thumbnail and not sorting properly.

Are the pics that aren't sorting correctly from very old digital cameras or phones, or are they scans?

The fix is to use the Metadata > Edit Capture Time command to assign a capture time to the photos that are missing it.

See this bug report for more details: Lightroom: Still inconsistent capture date/time for photos and videos | Photoshop Family Customer Co...

[Marcus Schneider94702]

Some of the non-sorting pictures are from a family member's high end Nikon, and some from my or my wife's current iphone. None are old or scans. I know I can insert a date myself, and I suppose I'll just start doing that for these several hundred pictures. It's annoying though when the correct dates are displayed right there under the thumbnails. If LR would just use those dates...

'I'll check out the bug report. Thanks.

[Just Shoot Me]

If they were RAW files and they exported them as JPGs, if they use LR, with the option to strip out all metadata that is why the dates and times aren't showing up. Also if they use some Nikon software to get images from camera to computer that software has been known to corrupt (or maybe a better term is change) the image data so LR can't read it properly.

[johnrellis]

I know I can insert a date myself, and I suppose I'll just start doing that for these several hundred pictures. It's annoying though when the correct dates are displayed right there under the thumbnails. If LR would just use those dates...

As described in the bug report linked to above, you can usually work around this bug by:

1. Select all the affected photos.  (It doesn't matter if you also select a few photos that aren't affected.)

2. Do Metadata > Edit Capture Time.

3. Leave the setting at Adjust To A Specified Date And Time.

4. Verify that the date shown in Correct Time is correct for the thumbnail displayed.

5. Click Change All.

This usually changes the date of all the affected pics to the dates shown under each thumbnail in grid view.  (This does not change all the selected pics to have the same date, a common confusion.)

I say "usually" because this is a bug, and by definition of "bug", the program is behaving in unexpected ways, so it's hard to guarantee a workaround will always work.  So prior to trying this, take these precautions:

1. Disable the option Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Write Changes Into XMP.  This will stop LR from changing any of your photo files, in case something goes wrong.

2. Make a backup of your catalog and test it out.

Once you've successfully corrected the dates, you can turn back on Automatically Write Changes Into XMP (if you had it on before).

[johnrellis]

Some of the non-sorting pictures are from a family member's high end Nikon, and some from my or my wife's current iphone.

Upload a couple of the problem pics to Dropbox or similar, and we can put them under the microscope.  We might be able to determine why they don't have embedded capture dates.

[Just Shoot Me]

In the Metadata section switch the Display drop down to "EXIF and IPTC" and look for the Date Time Original and Date Time Digitized fields. If there is nothing there then the original capture dates and times have somehow been stripped out. I have no idea how and why the supposed correct date and times are showing up at the bottom of the images. But whatever is placing those dates and times LR isn't using it for the sort order. Could be in some added on field that LR never looks at for the sorting of images.

[Marcus Schneider94702]

Oh, and I've changed the sort order a bunch of times to no avail. The photos re-sort (so the sort is doing something) but they go back to out of order when it's set to sort by capture date/time.