Import photos in Affinity Photo - chronological order

[Affinity-userr]

Normally im importing about 20-40 photos for editing purposes.

The problem - the imported photos are not sorted. But for exporting all those files, i have to start with the first of those pictures.

Im trying to work around that issue with clicking through the photos on the right side. And this list is chronological sorted.

How do i achieve exactly that but for the tab bar on top?

[markw]

Unfortunately it currently isn’t possible for APhoto to open and load a selection of images in alphanumeric order. Try the same images multiple times and the Tab order is always different.
Alphanumeric Tab opening has been asked for by others before, including myself but so far we are still living in hope!

[Affinity-userr]

What a bummer!

I truly thought the problem lies with me.
Never would i have guessed that this is not just "basic stuff" but a feature for the future.

Thanks a lot, @markw

[Old Bruce]

For what it is worth I wrote a little Python Script that would take the images in a folder and sort them alphanumerically then open in Photo one after the other so they were in the proper order in the tabs. Never actually needed it so I trashed it. I work on very few at a time, usually just one.

List all the files in a folder (with a particular file extension), sort the list. Work through the list opening each in Photo, or Photo 2 or Preview or whatever.

[carl123]

11 hours ago, Affinity-userr said:

Import photos in Affinity Photo - chronological order

If you really mean chronological order as opposed to alphabetical order you may want to add a feature request for this. As I don't think one exists at the moment

 

[Pšenda]

13 hours ago, Affinity-userr said:

Never would i have guessed that this is not just "basic stuff"

I don't think it's "basic stuff" for a photo editor, maybe for a DAM (which APhoto isn't).

What time do you want to sort it by? By the time of the file (could be totally out), or by any of the times in the EXIF (date/time original, create date, modify date), so parsing the data in the files is required?

[David in Яuislip]

Here's a Powershell script I wrote a while back to load files in chronological order however it sorts on system creation time
You'll need to change "C:\Program Files\Affinity\Photo\Photo.exe" for a V2 location and may reduce the sleep delay as required

Pšenda makes some good points, it may be possible to use exiftool to dig into the files, extract whatever datetime, sort that then let the script open the files in that order but that's for another life
Like Old Bruce, I found this to be not what I need and forgot about it until reading this thread

LoadToPhotoSorted.ps1

[Granddaddy]

File dates can be confusing in Windows because there are so many of them.

The meaning of the Date displayed by default in File Explorer's Date column (that follows the Name column in File Explorer's default configuration) differs depending on the type of file and folder you are viewing.

Let us look at a folder containing
a.) original jpg files from the camera,
b.) afphoto files saved after editing the jpg files in APhoto1, and
c.) jpg files exported from APhoto1

For jpgs
1.) the default date in File Explorer will be the Date Taken, even after the file has been edited
2.) the Date Created will be the date the files were first saved to the hard drive or copied to the hard drive from elsewhere
3.) the Date Modified will be the date the files were last edited

For afphoto files
1.) the default Date will be the Date Modified (when the afphoto file was last saved after editing)
2.) the Date Created will be the date the afphoto file was first saved or first copied to the hard drive from elsewhere
3.) the Date Taken will be blank 

The Windows Date Created can be long after the Date Taken and Date Modified fields, depending on when the file was copied to its folder on the hard drive.

It can be helpful to reset the folder view to show all four dates for any folder containing images. Numerous other date fields can also be displayed besides these commonly used four.

Below is an example of a folder containing jpg files I took with my Panasonic DMC-FZ1000 on 1/4/2021, edited in APhoto1 and exported to jpg from APhoto1 on 1/9/2021 and 1/16/2021, and later that year copied to my newer computer on 10/31/2021.

I speculate that many people do not realize the different possible meanings of the Date column in Windows File Explorer. 

[David in Яuislip]

1 hour ago, Granddaddy said:

File dates can be confusing in Windows because there are so many of them.

Whilst that's true, if the OP needs to sort by the datetime that an image was shot in a camera then the various windows dates may not be useful
The attached Powershell script uses exiftool to sort by time of shooting, DateTimeOriginal can be substituted as required for other exif dates

StartByShotTime.ps1

[R C-R]

On 3/8/2023 at 10:48 AM, Affinity-userr said:

The problem - the imported photos are not sorted.

The order, such as it is, is determined by when each of the photos has finished loading into the app. In part, that depends on how the files are accessed in the file system, which can vary depending on how busy the drive is with managing them & other files.

If it did not do that, it could hang for a very long time if there was a problem loading one or more of them.