Looking for app to control sequence in which photos are displayed

[Myer]

Any idea if photo display sequence (order) can be controlled?

 

[Myer]

I think I may be looking at the wrong place.

Is it possible the Photos app somehow has some settings such as display order?

 

[Myer]

Maybe I'm using the wrong word.

I'm looking for an app that allows me to display photos from existing albums.

The only real feature I'm looking for is to be able to sequence the photos in each app.

If the wording is incorrect then what I want to do is control the order in which the photos display.

I would probably want them in order of filename or date created.

Photos uploaded from a computer to an album using iTunes seem to be in order created. However, I don't want to have to connect a cable every time I want to upload photos to my iPhone.

I find that Simple Transfer Pro does a good job of creating albums and populating them with photos. But the sequence using the native Photos app appears to then be random bute fixed.

 

[J. A.]

Please don't start more than one thread about the same topic. It will confuse any resulting discussion, making it hard to follow. Keep any information or discussion of this topic to this thread only.
Thank you!

 

[Myer]

Sorry, I was hoping a different title might explain better what I'm looking for.

I have many photos taken over time that I want to display on my iPhone.

So far I have tried two methods to upload the photos from my PC to my iPhone and several photo display apps to display them.

1) I have used iTunes to upload the photos from my PC to my iPhone 6S. Then I used the native Photos app to display them. While I would prefer the photos within each album to be sequenced by filename (that way I can control them), the default appears to be by date of creation with no way to change it. This is acceptable.

What I don't like with this method is that I have to connect the iPhone to the PC via cable. Eventually, the cable will break.

2) Upload the photos from my PC to iPhone using Simple Transfer (Pro). This works fine. I can create albums and upload photos to the desired albums. I can view the albums and photos using the native Photos app. The problem is the display sequence. Although the display sequence is always the same, the sequence appears to be more or less random.

I have downloaded several photo display apps from the Apple store but none of them recognize my existing albums. They all want me to start with photos in Camera oll and create the albums and move photos into albums within their app.

Any solutions?

 

[J. A.]

I don't think you can change the order in which images are displayed on your iPhone. I'm using Google Drive as online storage for my images, as well as Flickr. They upload them in the order they were taken or saved to the iDevice. No idea if that's different when you upload them on the computer.

 

[Myer]

Am I the only person who takes photos with a camera and wants to display them on my iPhone?

 

[J. A.]

No, you are not. I'm taking pictures with my DSLR, and then I use a cable to load them to my iPad afterwards (not to the computer), from where they are synced to my iPhone via iCloud.

 

[Myer]

I think I just got beaten into submission. I deleted my photos, connected the cable and loaded them from my computer to my iPhone using iTunes.
At least they're in creation date order.

 

[Skull One]

There is only one way, that I am currently aware of, that will allow you to "approximate" what you are trying to do. And to be blunt it is not very maintainable over time. With that in mind this is how I accomplished the stated goal.

Pictures loaded onto first iOS device.
Create a New Shared Album.
Upload pictures that you want to reorder to that album.
Share that album with a second iOS device.
On second iOS device accept the album and let it download the thumbnails.
Now save each picture from the album to the camera roll in the order that you want them to display in the camera roll.

When you save each individual picture to the camera roll on the second iOS device, it resets the time/date stamp (not the internal data though) used for display order.

So while doable, if you want to change the order, you have to delete the pictures that you want to change the order of, and then re-save them again in the order you want. Tedious but doable.

 

[scifan57]

I can see how tedious that would be with a large number of photos, several thousand for example.

 

[Skull One]

I did it three times on my iPad before I finally said "not worth it". And I was only doing between 250 to 400 pictures each time.

 

[Myer]

I have a folder on my PC that has each of my albums beneath it. Each album contains the photos I want on my iPhone.

I connect the cable between my PC and iPhone, start up iTunes, make sure the correct upper folder is selected (I use a different folder on my PC for my wife's iPhone) and sync them.

I wonder whether it's the transferring app or the displaying app or both that determines the display sequence of the photos.

I also wonder why so many people have "bad" answers to the question and why it isn't just a Settings (app) option within an app. How hard could this be?

Is somebody trying to tell me that all photos displayed on my iPhone should be taken by an iPhone?

 

[scifan57]

The metadata for the photos, which includes the time the pictures were taken, is likely what is used to determine the order of photos in the camera roll and the other folders in the camera app. Since the metadata is transferred along with the photos, this would preserve the ordering of the photos to the order in which they were taken unless the tedious workaround described by Skull One in his post was used.

 

[Skull One]

I have a folder on my PC that has each of my albums beneath it. Each album contains the photos I want on my iPhone.

I connect the cable between my PC and iPhone, start up iTunes, make sure the correct upper folder is selected (I use a different folder on my PC for my wife's iPhone) and sync them.

I wonder whether it's the transferring app or the displaying app or both that determines the display sequence of the photos.

I can only speak about the Photos app provided by Apple. That particular app uses the time/date stamp on disk for viewing photos when looking at the camera roll (or any folder/album viewed from the ALBUM tab). The Photos (Moments) when connected to an iCloud account uses the on disk time/date stamp from the camera roll and then uses the internal time/date stamp of the photos from the iCloud account (that haven't been saved to the camera roll). Last the Shared photos tab uses the internal time/date stamp to display the order of the photos.

I also wonder why so many people have "bad" answers to the question

I'm not quite sure you what are trying to say or imply. But as far as I can tell, there have been no "bad" answers. Only answers based on a persons experience with one or more apps over time.

and why it isn't just a Settings (app) option within an app. How hard could this be?

I've spent the last 33 years as a professional programmer. And that question is the one that makes every programmer simply shake their head. There are several possible answers to that question.

1) Has anyone before you asked for it? No? Then how would they know to program it?
(By the way, you are the first person I have come across that has asked for that feature. And I have been around iOS for quite a while now. To include spending several years as a developer for iOS).

2) Have enough people asked for it to justify the cost of the feature? No? Then why dedicate man hours and money to that issue?

3) Enough people have asked and the budget has been approved. When do we cycle in the new feature? During a major revision or a point release? Do we have to wait until other features of the app are stabilized before injecting the new feature?

I could come up with a bunch more questions like that, mainly because I have had to deal with this question more times than I can count, but I am hoping you see my point. There is never an easy answer when you are dealing with software that costs 100s of millions to make each year and you only have so many people to work on each part of it. Heck my primary project for the last 24 years has over $14 million dollars invested in it and we still don't have every feature that I want. As the chief architect and lead programmer, that means I have had to make some really tough choices to what gets put in and what doesn't because of budget constraints.

Is somebody trying to tell me that all photos displayed on my iPhone should be taken by an iPhone?

No. In fact my solution was done using pictures taking by several non-iOS devices. I wanted to combine those sources into a specific order for displaying on an Apple TV from my iPad.