Lightroom export by capture time

[AliciaB830]

I am having problems exporting my edited images from lightroom and having them stay in capture time. I have them in capture time within lightroom but as they are exported they are in a completely random order.

Please advise 🙂
Thank you!!

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

The order you see the files outside of Lightroom Classic is controlled by your operating system. If it sorts the photos in an order that you don't like, then have your operating system sort the photos different. You can also use the LightrooM Classic Export rename capability to add a sequence number to the exported photos file names.

[ManiacJoe · Accepted solution]

This is one of the reasons that I always rename the original files based on the capture timestamp. Thus sort by name is the same as sort by capture date.

[Just Shoot Me · Accepted solution]

Every digital camera I have ever used has options for naming the files that are created.

I always set the cameras to Continuous file naming so every shot get the next number and never repeats until you get to the max number that particular camera allows, usually between 10,000 or 99,000 shots then it starts back at #1.

But you can also change the starting character of the file name and or use a number.

For the 2 Leica M8 cameras I have the file name always started with L and then a 1 then 00001 L100001. But you could change that first number. So on one of them I set it to start with a 2, L200001. And I made sure the date and time was set correcly on both cameras. This way in Lr when you sorted by Capture time no matter which camera I used, if and when I used both on the same shoot, all the images would Line up by the date and time of when the shot was taken. And if I sorted by File name, In Lr or by the File manager program, one cameras shots would be listed in order before the other.

Do not ever set the camera to Repeat the File naming after a Format of the card in the cameras.

So as to your problem  that the images are not in order by capture time that is either you have the camera set to Reuse the File naming, You Renamed the files on import and LrC usually screws that up becuase it does not import images from # 1 through # whatever. It may pick and choose images at random on import making the File Renaming be all over the place compared to the Capture Time, or you are renaming on Export and that is not going from the First shot, Capture Time, to Last Shot, Capture Time, and randomly picking image to export and numbering 1 -2 -3 or whatever out of sequence from the capture time

[johnh59497274]

I've had the same problems with my Mac running Mojave or Catalina. Exporting the pics WITH the metadata works for some info, but as others have said: the Mac system still goes by when the FILE was created (and not the image).

This app works well for me: Photo Exifer for Mac by Fireebok.com

It allows you to change the file created date to the camera date for all files in the same folder or other options. The photo files then sort by the original date created.  You can also edit other metadata.

https://www.fireebok.com/photo-exif-for-ios.html

It works, too, when saving/exporting a photo with changes made in LightRoom classic back into the same folder. Afterwards, run Photo Exifer on the folder and the file created dates will change back to the dates the photo was taken.