Determine how sorting of photos should work on Gallery and Album pages

[jmathai]

We've got quite a few issues (#735, #1339, #1340) that deal with how photos are sorted.

At the moment, photos are grouped by day and each group of photos is sorted by day descending. Within a day the photos are sorted by time taken ascending.

This gives the illusion of photos taken chronologically but by day.

Here's an example of how photos would be sorted.

January 2 @ 1pm
January 2 @ 3pm
January 1 @ 8am
January 1 @ 9am
January 1 @ 11am

This issue is to discuss preferences and rationale for those preferences. No guarantees on what the outcome will be :).

[hfiguiere]

How about user defined sorting? upload date sorting ? etc ?

Even with the previous version is was hard to get the "upload date" sorting.

[jmathai]

@hfiguiere I agree we should have at least a couple options. The biggest concern is making sure that the sorting is efficient. To get the sorting we have today required a separate column in the photo table.

So two things. What sorting provides enough value to enough users and which one to make default. I imagine having a plain sort by date taken desc (and possibly asc) will be a no-brainer.

[bpavot]

Plain sort makes more sense to me. Both asc and desc have legit and as important use cases :

• Holiday Photo gallery (asc) where it make no sense at all to see the last first
• Blog roll style gallery (desc)

Maybe Album should be asc and Gallery should be desc, but that might be confusing...

[jmathai]

Maybe Album should be asc and Gallery should be desc, but that might be confusing...

That's a really good question. I believe the mindset when viewing an album is different so a different sort might make sense. But I realize that since the views are so similar between Gallery and Album that it might also be confusing to have each with it's own sorting routine.

[hfiguiere]

Albums should have, as part of their definition, a sorting order. Like "sets" on "Flickr".

Sorting is part of the view, and since albums are a different view, they should have that sorting into it.

[sarah11918]

If straight ascending and descending could be options in both gallery and albums, I would think most could live with that. It's my very strong preference to have albums ascending (since I use them as stories of events) and I personally think that makes the most sense as a default view. But the gallery stream makes sense to be descending by default so that visitors can see what's new easily. Eventually, a handy sort option for the gallery might be "ascending beginning with specified date X" so that one can view the stream going forward but not be forced to start at the very beginning, but I'd be thrilled with just straight descending.

[egaillard]

I agree with hfiguiere. Date uploaded and date taken (ascending or descending), and user-ordered all have uses and should be supported. It may make sense to defer user-ordered since it implies building a UI for dragging photos around.

For most of my stuff, I want to display photos in descending order of upload date, as in a blog model, so that would be my vote for the default ordering; but good arguments can be made for date-taken, either ascending or descending, to be the default.

[catlee]

Ahhhh, that explains things! I was just trying to figure out why my pictures appeared to be out-of-order. The existing sort is very confusing. Having customizable sorting would be great. At the very least, having some indication of what the currently applied sort is would be a big help.

I normally prefer completely ascending or descending by the date the photo was taken, depending on the purpose of the album. Having the mixed descending-by-day, ascending-by-time is confusing.

[ghost]

sorting photos in the gallery should be newest first, also through the day. But I see it not as important.

In the albums - don't use any sorting system by date. The only sorting should be by editor's choice. That's why you create an album. You make a choice for a selection and a certain sorting.
That an editor choice is still not possible, is for me, that is only big disadvantage of trovebox. And makes me unhappy to use it.
Otherwise, it's simply awesome :)

[ghost]

Since I'm author of #1340, I vote for:

• gallery sorting as it is now (days desc, time in day asc)
• in album everything asc

I have this "fixed" for me in my site, now I can send links to abums to my friends and they are viewing phtos from multiday events in correct order, which is why I have installed trovebox. (In default order the album from party begins with photos, where everybody is drunk allready. :-)

I also undestand, that someone can have album ie. "Macro photography" and he/she is adding several photos each week, so the proposed album sorting in this case is wrong (should be the same as in gallery or desc), but this is IMHO not used so often, at least in my case. This can be fixed/addressed later by a new option to choose sorting for each album, but my proposed solution is a change in few lines of code.

[jmathai]

Here's a first attempt at the layouts for Gallery and Album making more sense. Keep in min it's part of a larger effort...

We want to distinguish between viewing your gallery (all photos - including tag searches) and an album. These views would have their own layout and sorting. This is going to happen across the mobile apps as well, though that will take longer. Here goes the first test...

The Gallery page will have the same sorting as it does today but display photos grouped by day more visually. The small labels seemed to be unanimously confusing. Was it the date of that photo? Why didn't all the photos have a date label? etc.

The Album page (when viewing photos of a single album) will have a more traditional sorting (newest to oldest) and continue to use the original justified layout as you see it today.

Below is a screenshot of the layout we're testing on the Gallery page. If you're using trovebox.com then you can enable it for your site by opting in to beta features on your settings page.

Speak now or forever hold your peace :).

[sarah11918]

I'd call it an improvement! :)

[peteaylward]

An ordering settings per album would be perfect: Newest first, oldest first, or custom. (I'd envisage custom being set by dragging and dropping images into order.)

My public albums are all events where oldest first makes sense so the photos can serve to tell the story of the event from beginning to end.

New gallery layout looks great btw.

[bpavot]

Looks good. But feels a bit odd though when there is only 1 or 2 photos per
day. It results in a long page with a blank space on the right.
I felt the justified layout looked quite good from an esthetic point of
view but i guess there is compromises to make.

As for albums, oldest first is still in my wish list...

my 2 cts

On Fri, Aug 9, 2013 at 11:22 PM, Pete [email protected] wrote:

An ordering settings per album would be perfect: Newest first, oldest
first, or custom. (I'd envisage custom being set by dragging and dropping
images into order.)

My public albums are all events where oldest first makes sense so the
photos can serve to tell the story of the event from beginning to end.

New gallery layout looks great btw.

—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/1341#issuecomment-22424086
.

[ghost]

Just perfect. I'm about a month with trovebox and all my main issues (this one and too small images in lightbox) are to be fixed. So what now? Allow adding comments to photos? Sorting galleries by date (not name)? Adding Picnik like editor? :-)

[jmathai]

@peteaylward Custom ordering is probably a stretch goal (not one we've been considering). It's brought up periodically so it isn't something we can really ignore :).

@bpavot Definitely aware of that problem. If your account has about 1 photo per day and the photos are public it'd be great to see it. I have tested that locally but it's important not to assume the best case scenario for the layout (groups of photos taken on the same day).

@xvasek2 Glad to hear. No immediate plans for comments (it is actually supported but not available in the UI). Sorting of albums is on the list of things to do. PIcnik-ish editor has been brought up plenty and we'd like to add it but no ETA.

[cedricbonhomme]

@jmathai Personally, for me it is rare to have more than 3 photos per day. Quite often 1 photo per day. I generally have more than 3 photos (ie near 5 ;-) when I come back from vacations (http://photos.cedricbonhomme.org/photos/list).
For me the current way to display the date is clear enough. If you want to display the date on each photo, maybe when the mouse is over the photo.

With the sorting I have no issue, too.

And like @xvasek2 said, I think that photos in the lightbox are a bit to small.

[peteaylward]

Maybe slightly off-issue, but certainly related: I've just used the beta upload page to create and add 40 or so photos to an album. This has uploaded them in a completely non-sensical order, ignoring any chronological order that could make sense to anyone viewing it: 'datetime uploaded, asc' ordering from a batch upload page would seem like a bad idea.

[sarah11918]

If we're going to start talking about the beta web uploader, we're gonna
need a bigger boat! ;) But strangely, of all the issues I've
encountered batch uploading, yours isn't one of them. I've been
emailing support directly describing my issues in painstaking detail,
but I'm happy to describe here if a separate thread is opened.

[sneakypete81]

Looks great! Thanks Jaisen.

As others have already mentioned, for me it makes more sense to have albums sorted oldest first, as they almost always relate to an "event".

[jmathai]

@cedricbonhomme We increased the size of photos in the lightbox view (#1303) ... do they still appear too small for you?

@peteaylward The ordering should be based off exif dates. Do you have a link to or example of the odd ordering?

@sarah11918 Thanks for the super detailed feedback. @sushimustwrite is taking notes off of it.

@sneakypete81 That seems to be the consensus....

[cedricbonhomme]

@jmathai The size here (#1303 (comment)) seems to be OK. My instance is using the master branch, so I didn't notice the change.

[peteaylward]

@jmathai

based off exif dates

Ah, this could be the issue. The batch had inadvertently been exported (from Lightroom) with reduced exif data so trovebox wouldn't have had anything to go on other than basic file info. Of course, had there been a LR plugin, this wouldn't have happened ;-) For the record, this was the album: https://peteaylward.trovebox.com/photos/album-u/list

[jmathai]

@peteaylward You'll have to take that up with @patricksan.

[jmathai]

FYI, the new sorting has been pushed to production on trovebox.com.

Gallery - sorted by date uploaded desc (last uploaded first)
Album - sorted by date taken asc (first taken first)

[tlupfer]

How about an API argument to sort the old way (i.e. by date) for the gallery?

When I started with trovebox, I uploaded in a completely non-linear fashion, so everything is a jumbled mess with the new sort.

[gorbachev]

The sorting on galleries is absolutely broken right now, for the reason @tlupfer mentioned.

The best option should really be user defined sorting.

I'm currently migrating (slowly) from a variety of photo storage solutions, and the uploads are happening in random order. The albums are unusable with the current sort.

[ghost]

Hm, the problem is, that IMHO nobody wanted sorting gallery according to
date uploaded. :-/ Date taken is much more reasonable. I agree, that
user defined sorting is the way to go.

(I'm not upgrading until this is fixed...)

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 5:22 AM, gorbachev [email protected] wrote:

The sorting on galleries is absolutely broken right now, for the reason
@tlupfer https://github.com/tlupfer mentioned.

The best option should really be user defined sorting.

I'm currently migrating (slowly) from a variety of photo storage
solutions, and the uploads are happening in random order. The albums are
unusable with the current sort.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com//issues/1341#issuecomment-25783423
.

Va¹ek Stodùlka
+420 608 200 860

[jmathai]

@xvasek2 @gorbachev Albums are sorted in the way you described (by date taken, no fancy grouping like before). The gallery is by last uploaded and we did that as a way to show your "stream" of photos. If you upload a 5 year old photo then you'll see it immediately under Gallery. User defined sorting could address that though.

No disagreement about user defined sorting but regardless of if we have that we need to pick a default that works for 99% of the people.

[sarah11918]

My albums do appear to be sorted by date taken, not date uploaded, FWIW. (Since no one else has reported so.) Very happy with the update.

[jmathai]

@sarah11918 Thanks. I believe the dissent is the update to how the sorting is happening on the Gallery.

For clarification, per @tlupfer's comment we're rolling back the default API behavior and modifying it for the view portion of the Gallery.

[sarah11918]

@jmathai D'oh, you're right! (I think coming from Picasa where there are only albums and no stream, I'm still not used to the vocabulary. I have to keep reminding myself that Gallery doesn't refer to "collection of albums.")

[ghost]

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 7:13 PM, Jaisen Mathai [email protected]:

@xvasek2 https://github.com/xvasek2 @gorbachevhttps://github.com/gorbachevAlbums are sorted in the way you described (by date taken, no fancy
grouping like before). The gallery is by last uploaded and we did that as a
way to show your "stream" of photos. If you upload a 5 year old photo then
you'll see it immediately under Gallery. User defined sorting could address
that though.

Hm, thinking about it some time, this new sorting in gallery is probably
not as bad as it seemed to me and makes sense. What is interesting, I want
to have both - the old and the new one at same time. :-) It's because I'm
thinking about uploading some photos from 90's. Maybe we should have two
"galleries" - first should be named "Timeline" (or "Gallery") and second
"Upload stream", each with different sorting. I just don't know, if this
doesn't go against the idea of simple-as-possible GUI and if it's crucial
enough to add new button.

(But it's just an idea...)

Vašek Stodůlka
+420 608 200 860

[ghost]

preferable, i like the version 'last uploaded' for the gallery.

But like other people already mentioned, much more important (even essential) is to make the order in albums,
just by editors choice / user defined

:) Uli

---

Uli Schuster

Mail [email protected]
Web www.gluecksbazillus.de
Blog http://us.gluecksbazillus.de

Am 07.10.2013 um 23:22 schrieb xvasek2 [email protected]:

On Mon, Oct 7, 2013 at 7:13 PM, Jaisen Mathai [email protected]:

@xvasek2 https://github.com/xvasek2 @gorbachevhttps://github.com/gorbachevAlbums are sorted in the way you described (by date taken, no fancy
grouping like before). The gallery is by last uploaded and we did that as a
way to show your "stream" of photos. If you upload a 5 year old photo then
you'll see it immediately under Gallery. User defined sorting could address
that though.

Hm, thinking about it some time, this new sorting in gallery is probably
not as bad as it seemed to me and makes sense. What is interesting, I want
to have both - the old and the new one at same time. :-) It's because I'm
thinking about uploading some photos from 90's. Maybe we should have two
"galleries" - first should be named "Timeline" (or "Gallery") and second
"Upload stream", each with different sorting. I just don't know, if this
doesn't go against the idea of simple-as-possible GUI and if it's crucial
enough to add new button.

(But it's just an idea...)

Vašek Stodůlka
+420 608 200 860
—
Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub.

[ajft]

All I can add is that I also expected the photos to be displayed in the order taken, not the order uploaded -- especially as I start revisting old photos scanned from negatives or recovered from other systems and including them in trovebox. To have them suddenly appear in a near random upload order seems a major step backwards, and the majority of my photos are not in albums and I hadn't had an intention of putting them in albums. Please let us choose date taken as the sort order for the gallery.

[rollick]

Ah, was wondering why my "recent 30" feed using the api wasn't working anymore. Not sure how far the user defined sorting is from production so any suggestions for getting the most recent XX photos from a specific gallery?

[sneakypete81]

I've just noticed that the "gallery" sort order (ie. descending by date uploaded) is also used when viewing by tag.

@jmathai: I understand your "photo stream" argument for this sort order in gallery view, but I can't think of a reason why tags would want to be sorted this way. To me "date taken" makes more sense for the tag view sorting (ie. the same as for the album views).

Is this a conscious decision or a mistake?

[jmathai]

@rollick We just pushed user defined sorting to production. You should see the options immediately above the photos.

@sneakypete81 You're right and the latest push adjusts that. The API reverts to the original v2 behavior but the web frontend overrides it as laid out below.

Gallery is sorted by default by date uploaded descending.

Album and Tags pages are sorted by default by date taken descending.

This is all configurable by a sortBy parameter to the API. Possible values below. The default is the old sorting as described in the opening description on this issue. (Note, the default API sorting was reverted but the web frontend overrides that).

sortBy=dateUploaded,asc
sortBy=dateUploaded,desc
sortBy=dateTaken,asc
sortBy=dateTaken,desc

Lots of changes in here. Report any bugs as new issues referencing this one.

[tlupfer]

@jmathai this is a great solution for me. Thanks!

[gorbachev]

This is awesome @jmathai Working great!

Now, if site owners could set defaults in settings, that would be even better.

[sarah11918]

So far, so awesome!