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Is there a way to sort photos by Date Taken?

hackysack Member
in General support
Hello -
I've been trying figure this out for a couple of months, both by searching the documentation and forums here, as well as a healthy dose of trial and error, with no luck. Guess I need some help.

When I view the files in Windows, it shows the correct date and times, and the file date matches the date taken.

In the album, I've tried sorting images by Date, and sorting by Filetime, yet neither sorts by date taken. Instead, the sort remains Date Modified.

I tried refreshing the Metadata, refreshing the database, and refreshing the cache. Is it possible to sort by Date Taken or creation date? If it is, what am I doing wrong?

Comments

  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    If you upload images they are copied and carry that date. You can sort by custom fields as well ("Custom" in teh dropdown of the backend tab of each album or generally). Look at the database's images table and you find a lot exif and iptc related fields.
  • hackysack Member
    Hello -

    Thanks for your suggestion, although when I enter custom, the only field I get in the dropdown is "mtime" which doesn't change anything when I click Apply. In fact, when I choose that option, when the screen refreshes after clicking reply, the change didn't stick. It does when I make other sort changes, though.

    I viewed the file itself to make sure the EXIF data is there, and it includes both DateTimOriginal and DateTimeDigitized and both of those dates correspond with the date the photo was taken. However, when I view the image table as you suggested, all of those fields are NULL.

    Is there an extension I need to make this work so the images are sorted the way I am needing?

    Thanks again
  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    On the sort images by dropdown there is an entry "custom". If you select that a field should appear where you can enter a field to sort by.

    If the meta data fields are empty in the database you probably don't have them enabled for reading. See the Options -> Image -> Metadata
  • hackysack Member
    That got me a little farther, but still not sorting as I'd like.

    Since I'm not sure which field corresponds to zenphoto for date taken, I enabled all of the following:
    - date created
    - digital creation date
    - digital creation time
    - original time taken

    Clicked apply, then went back to the new album I created to test this with, then clicked the "Refresh album Metadata" button.

    After it finished, I then selected Custom from the dropdown. There is still only one choice generated from that, and this time it is "date". Selecting then applying doesn't keep the change, and it reverts to whaever "noncustom" value that was there before.

    Looking at the database, the EXIFDateTimeOriginal is now populated and accurate, but don't see how to apply this as a sort value.
  • acrylian Administrator, Developer
    Again, select "custom" and then there is a field you have to type in the field you wish to custom sort by. You get suggestions what to use however by the first chars typed.
  • sbillard Member
    The "date" selection in the drop-down will select the Zenphoto date field. You can view what is in that field by editing the object on the back-end.

    If your image has data in those fields it will be used to populate the Zenphoto "date" field. If no metadata exists the upload date is used.
  • hackysack Member
    Bingo!

    That did the trick. Thanks for your help.
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