Sort By Capture Time Problems

[philipn95815980]

I'm running Lightroom Classic version 8.4 and I have all the photos in my catalog sorted by capture time (View > Sort > Capture Time, Descending).

But I've noticed that some images, whether imported RAW NEFs or edits, seem to want to zoom down to the bottom of the library grid view.

Sometimes I thought I was missing photos, but eventually found them languishing at the bottom, as if the capture time had been years ago, though they were recent and the sorting was obviously wrong.

I took a look around on the forum and found this thread which described a bug which would cause the behaviour I've described. However according to this thread, this bug was only apparent if the capture time shown under the thumbnail and that shown in the metadata panel don't match. The thread described a workaround, which was to select an offending image, choose Metadata > Edit Capture Time, and immediately click OK.

Now all the images that are affected in my library (that is, which erroneously appear at the bottom of the grid view despite having the view sorted by capture time, descending), don't have any mismatch between the dates shown under the thumbnail and those shown in the metadata panel - yet the workaround describe works - if, that is, I persevere and do it on all versions of an image (original NEF, external edit, etc).  Sometimes doing the workaround on one version won't do anything, but then I'll do it on another, and all versions zip back up to their correct position.

In other words, my images that are affected all have matching capture dates, wherever you look, yet they still scoot to the bottom of the grid view, until I select all variants and do the "Metadata > Edit Capture Time > OK" thing.

So I'm wondering, what's causing this bug? It seems peculiar that Lightroom Classic can't do as basic an operation as sorting images by capture time properly when all the dates match.

EDIT - It seems that some photos can only be corrected when I apply the workaround to completely unrelated images (i.e., not variants of the image, but others affected by the bug).

[johnrellis]

Are some of these photos in stacks?

[philipn95815980]

I guess so. In preferences > External Editing the "Stack with Original" box is checked. But why would that affect the sorting? Why should images, stacked or not, go to the bottom of the view, as if they were the oldest?

[GoldingD]

Is your OS Apple MAC?

[philipn95815980]

Yes - iMac Retina 5K, 27-inch, Late 2015; processor: 4 GHz Intel Core i7; RAM: 32 GB 1867 MHz DDR3; graphics: AMD Radeon R9 M395X 4 GB; macOS 10.14.6.

[GoldingD]

second attempt at this response

MAC OS is known as handling the capture date metadata poorly. It is your OS that is giving you grief.

One workaround. And quite frankly a common Pro practice (so not so much a workaround) is to rename your photos using the following syntax:

YYYYMMDD_hhmmss

Lightroom will properly read the metadata and properly rename the photos (a sequence number will be added for conflicts)

 Then you can sort on file name.

[Ian Lyons]

When Lightroom behaves in a way that is at odds with what's expected, then there's a reasonable chance that the preference file has become corrupt. You can rest this file by follwoing the steps set out in Method 1 of this linked Adone Help document: https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/setting-preferences-lightroom.html

[johnrellis]

"I guess so. In preferences > External Editing the "Stack with Original" box is checked. But why would that affect the sorting? Why should images, stacked or not, go to the bottom of the view, as if they were the oldest?"

LR sorts stacks according to the attributes of the top photos in the stacks -- the other photos in the stacks just go along with the ride. You can tell which photos are in stacks by the stacking badge in the upper-left corrner of the thumbnails and the vertical rules on the first and last thumbnail in the stack:

If this stacking rule doesn't account for the behavior you're observing, please attach a full-resolution screenshot of your entire LR window to your reply. Make sure the capture dates are visible on each thumbnail.

With this horrible new forum platforum, don't insert the screenshot using the image button -- it will get reduced in resolution. Rather, add it as an attachment. Adding an attachment is a little convoluted:

1. Reply using the *blue* Reply button under your first post, not the black reply button.

2. Post the reply.

3. At the bottom of that posted reply, click More and then Edit Reply.

4. You can attach files using the box at the bottom of the editing window:

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[philipn95815980]

I'm still not sure how my stacks could have caused the dates of some images to appear ancient, but I've de-stacked the lot now, and set 'auto-stack by capture time' to zero, and the problem seems to have gone. If it comes back I'll take another look. Thanks for the info.

[johnrellis]

[My last reply had embedded images, which don't show up in emails. Come back to the Web site to view the images.]

[GoldingD]

Issue is your OS. MAC OS is known for mishandling capture time in metadata.

One work around is to rename photos per the syntax

YYYYMMDD_hhmmss

Lightroom will use the correct metadata to grab the year, month, day, hour, minute, second to create the new file names (a sequence number will be added if required fir images during same second). Then sort by file name.