Problem with Filename Sorting

nvision · June 21, 2006

greetings,
for some reason, "filename sorting" does not work in my galleries; my photos end up scattered randomly. does this affect anyone else? i use the Canon 20D which output filename prefix, "_MG_". not sure if this could be the issue.

any help would be appreciated. it's very frustrating to be rearranging my photos each time i set up a gallery, especailly with large amount of images. thanks in advance.

-johnny

Andy · June 21, 2006

nvision wrote:

greetings,
for some reason, "filename sorting" does not work in my galleries; my photos end up scattered randomly. does this affect anyone else? i use the Canon 20D which output filename prefix, "_MG_". not sure if this could be the issue.

any help would be appreciated. it's very frustrating to be rearranging my photos each time i set up a gallery, especailly with large amount of images. thanks in advance.

-johnny

Site name? Oh and that file name means you're set for Adobe RGB, that's bad for web display and bad for printing. You should convert to sRGB, or shoot in sRGB if you can.

More here, and I'll be back later to help further:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998

EDIT OK I see your site is http://jau.smugmug.com/ I can look at your galleries later. (I'm in NY but will be back soon).

nvision · June 21, 2006

thanks andy. photos posted are actually sRGB. i shoot in adobeRGB with RAW and filenames were preserved after profile conversion.

Andy wrote:

Site name? Oh and that file name means you're set for Adobe RGB, that's bad for web display and bad for printing. You should convert to sRGB, or shoot in sRGB if you can.

More here, and I'll be back later to help further:
http://www.smugmug.com/help/srgb-versus-adobe-rgb-1998

EDIT OK I see your site is http://jau.smugmug.com/ I can look at your galleries later. (I'm in NY but will be back soon).

Andy · June 21, 2006

Can you give me a specific gallery link where you're having this trouble? Thanks.

nvision · June 22, 2006

happens on every gallery. take this recent one, for example,
http://jau.smugmug.com/gallery/1515291

Andy wrote:

Can you give me a specific gallery link where you're having this trouble? Thanks.

Andy · June 22, 2006

Seems to work for me.
Gorgeous photos, BTW

Can you tell us the exact steps you use to sort?

nvision · June 22, 2006

oh thanks for the compliment, lol. you're right, it did work, strange. my bad, this may be a bad example since i've omitted the "_MG_" prefix as a test (it still didn't work during that time but anyway).

try this gallery instead,
http://jau.smugmug.com/gallery/1378302

drop down to Arrange Photos
drop down to File Names
hit Reverse button a few times to get the sorting action going

you'll notice the images are out of order. Don't save! this gallery is fine as it is right now after manual sorting.

this is a very odd behavior for a simple task...

Andy wrote:

Seems to work for me.
Gorgeous photos, BTW

Can you tell us the exact steps you use to sort?

nvision · June 27, 2006

hey andy, have you tried this approach? if so, have you experienced this same behavior? thanks.

nvision wrote:

oh thanks for the compliment, lol. you're right, it did work, strange. my bad, this may be a bad example since i've omitted the "_MG_" prefix as a test (it still didn't work during that time but anyway).

try this gallery instead,
http://jau.smugmug.com/gallery/1378302

drop down to Arrange Photos
drop down to File Names
hit Reverse button a few times to get the sorting action going

you'll notice the images are out of order. Don't save! this gallery is fine as it is right now after manual sorting.

this is a very odd behavior for a simple task...

Andy · June 27, 2006

I'll ask JT to look, maybe the _ causes a problemo. Thanks.

boyersmile · June 27, 2006

I'll chime in here with the same problem. I've noticed this for a while, but it wasn't bothering me enough to bring it up. I follow the same steps as nvision:

drop down to Arrange Photos
drop down to File Names
hit Reverse button a few times to get the sorting action going

I usually see most of the files sorted by filename, but a few of them will be out of order. The ones that are out of order will usually be those that were edited in photoshop. All the others that are in the correct order will be straight from the camera.

I know that I had the problem with this gallery: http://boyersmile.smugmug.com/gallery/1506442

I think I've manually sorted them now, but when I originally tried to sort by filename, I had several photos out of order. If I remember correctly, the ones that were out of order had been edited in photoshop. All the others were straight from the camera. I just checked again and see that this method does incorrectly sort photo MLB_9139. MLB_9139 is placed before MLB_9137 and MLB_9138.

I also just noticed that MLB_8943 is before MLB_8942. As far as I remember, these are straight from the camera.

I think I also tried sorting by date taken, and got similar results. I have also noticed that pictures taken at 5 fps continuous mode will sometimes be out of order when sorted by "date taken". I'm assuming that the sorting method only looks at the second taken rather than the fraction of a second??? Not a big deal, just wondering.

Anyway, just thought I would add my $.02. Hopefully I've given useful information without confusing the issue even further.

Thanks,
Miles

marlinspike · June 27, 2006

I get the same thing. Posted about it a while ago too. Sort by date taken seems to work better, though still not fail safe.

Jason Dunn · October 29, 2006

Hey there...I figured I'd add my 2 cents since I'm facing the same issue. What this boils down to is that Smugmug does not sort file names like Windows XP does (not sure how OS X works in this regard).

In the Windows world files that start with an underscore (_pear.jpg) will show up before files that that start with a letter or number (pear.jpg). This issue is problematic for me in this gallery:

http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/1997142

If you scroll down to the very bottom you can see that the files after "ZZ Top" are files that start with an underscore:

_25-all-time-holiday-favorites-1994.jpg

It would be really, really great if Smugmug's system for sorting based on file name worked exactly like Windows XP does, largely because I imagine that's what most of their customers are using. Or if Macs do it differently, maybe there's a "Windows" and "Mac" sort function or something.

There are also problems with the way the Smugmug system deals with regular files names. Take a look at this gallery for instance:

http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/2034190

The first three photos, when sorted by file name, are:

L T Paniak's 60th Birthday - 007.jpg
L T Paniak's 60th Birthday - 011.jpg
L T Paniak's 60th Birthday - 012.jpg

Why would 007.jpg come first?

L T Paniak's 60th Birthday - 004.jpg:
http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/2034190/2/104648030

Comes just before L T Paniak's 60th Birthday - 045.jpg:
http://photos.jasondunn.com/gallery/2034190/2/104663045

There IS a logic here looking at the 004.jpg and 045.jpg, but I can't figure out why 007.jpg would be before 001.jpg.

As you can tell, I prefer more "natural" file names, complete with spaces, full words, and numbers. I really adore Smugmug, and am just starting to use it, but this issue is a painful one for me.

{JT} · October 31, 2006

We use our web server's language to determine the alphabetical order of the files, obviously this is not good enough. I can adapt the code to use javascript though, which should be much better. No ETA on when the fix will be out though.

Problem with Filename Sorting

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