After much work I cleaned and exported my photo library from Mac Photos and imported into Shotwell. I love Shotwell, mainly just to finally have an alternative to Apple
But I notice a sorting issue. At the oldest end of my Shotwell library itâs showing pictures which are not that old and not sorted properly. For instance if I click on âPhotosâ to view all photos, sort by exposure date and go to the âold endâ, I see loads with exposure dates (viewing date) of 2006, yet there are older ones in there with older exposure dates.
This seems to affect maybe 50-100 photos at the old end of the library, then after that they seem to be sorted properly. More weirdly, if I view events list, go to oldest events, those 50-100 donât show in any old events.
I donât suppose there is any kind of âclean upâ operation I can run to try and re-index them all?
PS I have spent quite a lot of time sitting with two machines, on one is Shotwell, on the other is old imac with Photos app. Both sorted the same. Shotwell seems to have quite a few missing from the date sorted list. I picked a few at random which are missing, found the filename from Photos on mac, searched for that filename in Shotwell and they DO exist in my library, it finds that same photo. BUT, itâs not in the list chronologically where it should be (so Iâd have no way to find it by browsing dates which is how I find what I need), and even if I look at Events on left pane, I canât find it for any events in that date.
Basically there are tons of important photos somewhere inside Shotwell, but Iâll never find them again without knowing their filenames! (In this case A_4a.jpg!)
I need to resolve this or I will have to keep the old imac on desk disconnected from web just as a photo library machine. I intended to do that for a while anyway until I am confident in Shotwell to find what I need quickly. Would much rather dump Photos and Mac completely though
Is there a clean up utility or any other suggestions? for example, maybe I could pay for one of these Mac Photos clean up programs, let it do a clean up/re-index, and then export fresh into Shotwell. Is that likely to improve matters?
Further investigating, not confirmed yet so may be a red herring but a lot of the photos that arenât showing in Photos sorted list seem to have underscores in filename, and maybe a capital letter. I canât confirm that applies to every single one yet, but if it inspires any clever ideas I am listening! thanks
EDIT: Scratch that. Most of pics in good sorted order have underscores or capitals, itâs not that.
UPDATE: I noticed something⌠Letâs say (as is the case) that I have 30 photos from a birthday party in 2008, but 8 are missing from the sorted list in Shotwell (but show in order in Mac Photos). Comparing those that show in Shotwell list vs those that donât, thereâs metadata for those that do show, camera type, focal length etc. For those that donât show thereâs only an exposure date (which is correct in some cases, but in other cases itâs wrong and always same Feb 27 2008?!.
Further update: I found a âNo Eventâ option bottom of left sidebar, not fully checked if ALL are in there, but definitely a LOT of the ones I noticed missing from sorted âPhotosâ list are in there.
Could this be a metadata corruption of some kind?
Still wondering if one of these overpriced Photos App cleaners may be worth buying, after avoiding them all these years! (and reimport to shotwell)?
Thanks for replying. Sorry but I donât quite understand, are you saying I have done something wrong causing this? Or are you saying itâs a known issue?
If the latter, could you refer me to anywhere else I can read about it and is there any likelihood of it being cured some day?
thanks again
Ctrl+S for a new saved search and set it to âDate is not setâ like below
Then click on the Seach in the left bar
Then Ctrl-A for Select All, then F4 for âAdjust Date and Timeâ if you just want âsomeâ time on all of the photos, of course you can do all this (selecting, F4, set time) for just a subset if you want to be more precise.
Thanks so much for replying.
This looks promising! So, if I have it right, this will only set a time/date for the photos that donât already have a date or time in their metadata. is that correct? (i donât want to overwrite any good date metadata)
Also, is this sorting issue a bug that is likely to be fixed some time?
Did that, the search says 2200 photos (out of 37,000) that have no date set.
However, before I do anything else, when i click on any of them, they do appear to have a date set?! I will put a screenshot below of one example, grateful if you can comment before I proceed, is that not the date you meant? Strange that it found 2200 photos which do appear to have a date set, unless I am missing something (which is likely!)
No worries at all.
Would you say I should go ahead and follow the procedure you gave me above to add exposure dates to the 2000 found in the search? Or not point now since they already have dates so it canât be that causing the sorting issue?
I will wait to hear, may as well not edit the dates if thatâs not the issue, as they could be useful in future (if they are accurate, they may be). If needed I am happy to just leave it and live with it until you find time to look into it.
thanks
The properties panel on the right hand side uses the file time (not sure which one) if no time in the metadata is available. there is an old ticket that suggests to do something like that on import already.
The query on the other hand looks only at the meta-data. If the file time looks anywhere correct, it would probably be easier to write a script that transfers that into the fileâs meta-data and let shotwell pick it up on the next start. Iâm pretty sure such scripts are flying around alreay using either exiftool or exiv2
Getting a bit over my head here but I think youâre saying those exposure times may not be actual metadata? If so, I guess I could confirm by finding out how to look the metadata on the files in my file manager?
I have found Phil Harveyâs ExifTool (CLI and GUI).
Looks like there are commands to bulk write new metadata to files in a folder, so in theory (bit over my pay grade this but positive thinking and all that ) I could move the saved search results/files into a single folder, apply the âwrite to all files in folderâ command found here ExifTool Command-Line Examples, and add some metadata to help Shotwell sort them, if you think that may help?
Sorry I have just noticed I have two user accounts on here. No idea why, I donât get this âDiscourseâ thing, not even sure what it is but I assume I must have created a second user account for another board somewhere and then it tied back to âcentralâ. Far too complicated for my old brain! Just give me phpBB back with a user account for any forum I want to join!!
PS I just had a thought, originally you said " no exposure time in the meta-data" I assumed that meant TIME THE PICTURE WAS TAKEN!!! Did you actually mean the exposure time as in 1/100? Itâs onoly just occurred to me after looking at images. Or did you mean the date/time taken as I first thought? thanks!
No âexposure timeâ in Shotwell means the time when the exposure happened, i.e. one of
âExif.Photo.DateTimeOriginalâ,
âXmp.exif.DateTimeOriginalâ,
âXmp.xmp.CreateDateâ,
âExif.Photo.DateTimeDigitizedâ,
âXmp.exif.DateTimeDigitizedâ,
âExif.Image.DateTimeâ
The Exposure time as in âtime slot that the exposure was done forâ is the âexposure time property on the photoâs meta-dataâ and yes, that is very confusing naming, sorry.
