I am considering moving a gallery of around 10,000 images that is sorted via html to ZP. The images are custom sorted. I could write the sort order to one of three IPTC fields (Catption, Headline, Source) before uploading to ZP.

Would it then be possible to sort each album by that field?

Otherwise I could use Drag & Drop, but only if I could drag a group of photos (which does not seem possible).

You can setup a "custom" sort by any of the database fields. So you should pick the IPTC field you like and use it. On the album page for [i]sort images by[/i] first select [i]custom[/i] then type in the fieldname. (Note that there will be a suggestion, so for instance typing `iptcs` will give you three options including `iptcsource`.

Fantastic! I see I can apply the sort to individual albums also.

Is "image source" & "iptcsource" the same field? I have written my sort order to the "source" field in Lightroom. I then verified that the "image source" field in ZP is showing that same sort data. I then try custom sorting by the "iptcsource" field but it has no effect on the sorting of the images.

It appears that EXIF & IPTC fields are shown mixed together in the Metadata field selection, in the image options panel. Is that correct?

My only reason for using the "source" field is that it was unused & probably won't be populated with anything important in the future

If your sort order is in the database IPTCsource field then you should be able to custom sort on it. "Image source" is just the tag that is used when it is displayed.

Most people care little whether the data came from the IPTC or the EXIF standard so we make no distinction.

The IPTCsource data is a synonom for the image credit, so that field may get placed in the credit field as well, depending on what other fields are present. It is the lowest priority source for the credit field, though.

Ok..... so it appears that I have everything set correctly. Any idea why the the custom sort by "iptcsource" is having no effect.

No, it should be working the same as any other database field. There have been some unrelated issues with sorts so probably it would be a good idea to update to the current nightly build to see if it makes a difference. Also if you happen to be using a third-party theme try the `default` theme to be sure the issue is not theme related.

I installed the nightly build. I have also done quite a bit of testing, still not able to sort by any IPTC field.

I reduced the album to only 12 pics. Also wrote the sort order to IPTCSubLocation I also looked into the database & verified that these fields are populated with the sort order. So the sort order is written to 2 fields, yet will not sort by either one.

I also wrote the filename to the IPTCImageCaption field, and it will not sort by the "iptcimagecaption" either.

So from my testing I am unable to sort by 3 different IPTC fields that are populated in the database, and also show in Album>>Images>>Show more fields.

I have also confirmed that the album will sort manually, or by filename, so sorting works by other methods.

NOTE: In the album settings panel the sort field cannot be saved using any caps, which does not match the database field names (in case this setting is case sensitive).

The problem is the case "insensitivity". The field name needs to be the proper case. I have developed a fix for this in the Development build. I welcome you to try it by downloading tonight's nightly development build.

If the fix works for you I will retrofit it to the 1.4.3 stream. But it will take a while to insure it is stable in that release. So I doubt it will make the 1..3.2 release.

Great!...thanks for checking into the issue, I thought I was going crazy trying to get it to work. I will try the nightly dev. build tomorrow. (11pm PST's getting pretty late here in CST)

I had custom sort working perfectly using the "iptcsublocation" field last week after installing the 8/31/12 nightly build. I then installed the 1.4.3.2 update and worked on some CSS changes not noticing the custom sort by IPTC is no longer working till tonight. Then I noticed you said it would not make it into 1.4.3.2

So I reinstall the 8/31/12 nightly build, but the sort by IPTC is still not working. Any ideas what is happening now? Frustrating, thought I had this solved, with all 7,500 images sorted correctly.

Do I need to do a more thorough re-install of the nightly. I updated only zp-core, themes, & index.php, and ran set up.

I cannot answer regarding hte actual issue and leave that to my colleage but you updated correctly.

Just a guess, but since the fix was in the development build maybe you installed the release nightly instead? Anyway, the solution would be to install the current release nightly as the changes are in that now.

Thanks I'll try that. Looking at the database it looks like many photos are now missing the 3 digit sequence that was written to the iptcsublocation field prior to uploading. That would seem to be impossible. I never instructed ZP to overwrite that field. I'm a little pressed for time right now. Need to investigate further.

I do not know how those fields could be deleted. Only possibility is that some images had empty metadata and got updated setting the value to blank.