# Image sorting



## gYab61zH (Aug 14, 2011)

I wonder if anyone knows how to solve a sorting problem. My images are arranged according to country-city-sublocationI shoot objects at particular locations and arrange my images in folders according to place, but this isn't refined enough. It is very important for my work to be able to see all images for a particular sublocation, not in the order in which I shot the images, but by a special location code which is recognised by others working in the same field (art history) and for which I would like to use the extended LocationShown/Sublocation field (at present these codes are stored in one of the IPTC fields). Manual sorting is out of the question since there may be as many as 1000 images for a specific sublocation.

Can this be done at all in LR? My impression is that although LR is intended to serve as a repository for images, its sorting functions leave something to be desired.


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## Gene McCullagh (Aug 14, 2011)

Hi gYab61zH!

It seems that you mean filtering (i.e. "sorting out") rather than sorting (i.e. putting in a particular order). 



> to see all images for a particular sublocation



The Location, City, State/Province, and Country fields are available in the filters so you could show images for chosen sublocatios if that information is entered.  Alternatively you could add keywords for these sublocations and find them that way. The particular field you mention if part of Extended IPTC and not included in searches of filters.

If I misread and you do mean putting the image in an order by location then, yes, LR's sorting choices are indeed limited.

These are great suggestions and I'd encourage you to use the feature request link at the top of the page to let Adobe know about it.


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## gYab61zH (Aug 14, 2011)

Gene, I did mean sorting. I photograph objects that appear in a fixed order and this order can be of great significance. Sometimes it takes more than one shoot to do them all, so sorting on time makes no sense. It seems very odd to me that such a heavy-weight program like LR which is based on a SQL database cannot even do fairly elementary sorting (on IPTC fields, extended or otherwise). This is a major inconvenience.


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## Gene McCullagh (Aug 14, 2011)

Yes. This is one of the areas that LR needs to improve upon. Sorting, Filtering, and Keywording are my top 3 improvement items. The team at Adobe does listen and is always interested in what users think about ways to improve the feature set. Your suggestions are important and the more users that point this out the better the chance it will get on the list sooner.

As a workaround perhaps you could explore some sort of filename template that incorporates this code. Since you can sort on filename it may get you part of the way to where you want to be. This template can be applied during import so you wouldn't have to rename every file individually.


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## erro (Aug 14, 2011)

John Beardsworth recently created a "List view" plugin that lets you view the photos in Lightroom in a text list, and also lets you sort according to many different parts of metadata. You can sort on Location, City, State or Country among many others.

http://www.beardsworth.co.uk/list-view-new-lightroom-plug-in/


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## gYab61zH (Aug 14, 2011)

I had thought about that too, but it is a little like putting the cart before the horse. I would then first need to enter the metadata using LR or another program and then import it into LR (again). It does make me wonder though; there must surely be loads of people who would like to sort at least on location or city?


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## Victoria Bampton (Aug 14, 2011)

gYab61zH said:


> It does make me wonder though; there must surely be loads of people who would like to sort at least on location or city?



You have the wonderful honour of being the first I've run into.


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## johnbeardy (Aug 14, 2011)

I think anyone who has used a DAM program before would be lining up to say proper sorting capability should have been in LR from day one - just like a list view. 

John


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## johnbeardy (Aug 14, 2011)

I'd just add that in the absence of a list view, I'm not sure it makes sense to have sorting much more advanced than is currently available in Lightroom. Sorted grids don't really make a huge amount of sense, but a columnar view comes alive once you can sort it.

I'm going to see if I can modify my List View plug-in so it will save a sorted view to a new collection. But I have other things to do first.

John


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## gYab61zH (Aug 15, 2011)

It is a dubious honour to be the first to request such a feature. John your last two remarks puzzle me a little .. a proper sorting capability should have been there from day one, yet in the absence of a list view it makes little sense? I a not sure what you mean by list views and sorted grids (what is the difference?), but I would be greatly helped if the library window presented all images sorted according to one or more metadata criteria.


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## johnbeardy (Aug 15, 2011)

Sorting by all fields might be handy where the UI is a grid of thumbnails, but not really as useful as it can be. If you're going to allow proper sorting, you really need to add a list view.

Perhaps the only reason you're the first VB has encountered is more because of her route to Lightroom not having been from DAM packages? I feel both sorting and a list view are needed, and I've said so since day 1, as have others. 

John


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## MarkNicholas (Aug 15, 2011)

Are we talking about filtering or sorting (as in order). How can you order sort a load of photos with the same metadata ?


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## johnbeardy (Aug 15, 2011)

Sorting, Mark, and they obviously wouldn't all have the same metadata. 

John


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## erro (Aug 15, 2011)

If some metadata are the same then you could sort secondarily on other metadata. Or default to secondary sorting on filename, timestamp or whatever. I can't see why sorting in LR should behave any differently than sorting in any other piece of software.

If there was such a thing as sorting on any metadata field, I would probably use it sometimes.


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## MarkNicholas (Aug 16, 2011)

Still not getting it ! 
Can't you do this anyway. Filter say location or creator and then sort by file name or edit date.


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## gYab61zH (Aug 16, 2011)

Mark, filtering allows you to narrow down a particular set of images according to such criteria as location, but the resulting set is still not sorted, and the options in LR to do so are very limited (basically you can sort on time but not on any of the metadata fields). Imagine you have photographed your stamp collection. Filtering them by country is one thing, but would it not be useful to be able to present each stamp in order of its value (market or face)? So any photographic collection in which items both share one or more features but also differ individually with respect to other features benefits by sorting. I expect good management software to let ME choose what features to encode in the metadata fields (which LR does) and then let me use those fields for selection and sorting purposes.


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## MarkNicholas (Aug 16, 2011)

gYab61zH said:


> Mark, filtering allows you to narrow down a particular set of images according to such criteria as location, but the resulting set is still not sorted, and the options in LR to do so are very limited (basically you can sort on time but not on any of the metadata fields). Imagine you have photographed your stamp collection. Filtering them by country is one thing, but would it not be useful to be able to present each stamp in order of its value (market or face)? So any photographic collection in which items both share one or more features but also differ individually with respect to other features benefits by sorting. I expect good management software to let ME choose what features to encode in the metadata fields (which LR does) and then let me use those fields for selection and sorting purposes.



Ok I understand what you are trying to do but in my opinion this is way beyond the intended functionality of LR. For a regular photographer I believe that the available sorting options are probably sufficient. However, having said that, as it is basically a database I would have thought it would be easy to implement what you are suggesting.


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## DavidHB (Aug 16, 2011)

MarkNicholas said:


> ... in my opinion this is way beyond the intended functionality of LR. For a regular photographer I believe that the available sorting options are probably sufficient.


Presumably, only Adobe can say what is 'intended'. What they say, in describing Lightroom, is that it is
_
a fast, intuitive assistant that gives you the tools you need to efficiently edit, manage, and showcase your images._
​or, in other words, a workflow application with DAM capabilities. When you compare it with applications such as iMatch or Expression Media, Lightroom lacks the range of sorting capabilities you would expect in such an application.  In particular, the ability to sort on a wide range of data elements and on more than one element at a time are surely essential tools when one is dealing with the sizes if image libraries that are now commonplace.

Thanks, too, to John B for his point about the list view. This hadn't occurred to me before in relation to Lightroom. While I probably see more use than he seems to do for complex sorting of the thumbnail view, I agree that the classic database grid, while not as pretty as some views, is often the only place the data you really want to see actually shows up; just ask anyone who regularly uses an accounting application!

David


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## johnbeardy (Aug 16, 2011)

I am indeed a former spreadsheet warrior. Still in rehab....

My suspicion is that the limited sorting ability is less about LR's intended scope and more about the initial rush to release 1.0 in response to Aperture (which had a sortable list view since day 1) and subsequently about LR's sorting not being thoroughly broken - just second-rate. 

John


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## DavidHB (Aug 16, 2011)

johnbeardy said:


> My suspicion is that the limited sorting ability is less about LR's intended scope and more about the initial rush to release 1.0 in response to Aperture (which had a sortable list view since day 1) and subsequently about LR's sorting not being thoroughly broken - just second-rate.


... or is it that the good folks at Adobe are so visually oriented that they don't like to include in their software things that don't look pretty? That kind of approach also creates expectations; perhaps MarkNicholas' point a few posts back is that a text list or grid is not the kind of thing he'd expect to see in an Adobe application?

I can certainly think of cases where another application does a job less prettily but more efficiently than its Adobe counterpart. Grids are not pretty, but you can scroll through them, watch the patterns in the data unfold, and spot oddities straight off.

David


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## johnbeardy (Aug 16, 2011)

"... or is it that the good folks at Adobe are so visually oriented... "

To some extent, and perhaps Adobe have never felt completely at home with database-driven apps. In the DAM field they were a big investor in the early days of Extensis Portfolio but then sold off their stake, plus they had plenty of opportunities to acquire iView but let Microsoft gobble it up. On the other hand, there's always been a list view in Bridge and PS Elements Organiser.... 

John


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## gYab61zH (Aug 16, 2011)

At the risk of being heretical, would it perhaps make sense for me to switch to Aperture (I cannot go back to iMatch since I switched from PC to Mac and I do not really want to run it in Parallels, although that does work). I gather version 3 offers combined metadata sorting, but I am not so sure how good it is in other respects. For me the ability to use hierarchical keywords is very important, as are limited photoediting abilities. Does anyone here have expreience with both programs?


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## DavidHB (Aug 16, 2011)

johnbeardy said:


> there's always been a list view in ... PS Elements Organiser....


If it still exists in PSE 9, it seems to be very well hidden. I can find nothing in the menus, Help, or my PSE reference book referring to the kind of grid we have been discussing, or anything that calls itself a 'List View'.

David


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## johnbeardy (Aug 16, 2011)

DavidHB said:


> If it still exists in PSE 9, it seems to be very well hidden.


Must be wrong - I always thought it had one!

John


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## johnbeardy (Aug 16, 2011)

gYab61zH said:


> At the risk of being heretical, would it perhaps make sense for me to switch to Aperture (I cannot go back to iMatch since I switched from PC to Mac and I do not really want to run it in Parallels, although that does work). I gather version 3 offers combined metadata sorting, but I am not so sure how good it is in other respects. For me the ability to use hierarchical keywords is very important, as are limited photoediting abilities. Does anyone here have expreience with both programs?



Two or three of us do. I just have it more for curiosity than any other reason. There are some good aspects, such as lists and smart collections, geotagging, but some things I really dislike such as the basic problem of being limited to one brand of computer and the inability to see where your photos are without jumping into a dialog box. Its UI is almost as fiddly as iMatch though!

John


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