Taming Photos on iPhone

If you have come to this page, you would have been like me, tearing your hair out, trying to figure out how Apple organises photos and videos on the iPhone after they have been synced from your PC or MAC.  There doesn’t seem to be a logical way Apple does this.

I think all of us are most happy taking photos and videos with the iPhone during your vacation. Some are sent to you by Whatsapp, iMessage or Email.  They are sorted in the most logical way – by date.  The trouble starts after you copy the photos/videos to your PC/MAC, copy and move them around, edit some of them, sync it back to your iPhone; then BAM! its a mess!  Photos taken earlier shows up at the bottom of the list, edited photos are somewhere in between, videos are either at the top or bottom of the bunch. You want to show these photos to your mom but you can’t show it to her like that?!

Next you try to renaming your photos in all sorts of manner – A001, A002, A003 … doesn’t work. Maybe 1, 2, 3, 4 … nope.  Even Apple’s knowledge base is hopeless. You finally give up and upload everything to Dropbox and sort it by name.

After 9 iOSes, Apple still doesn’t tell people whats going on.

So, I am here to tell you how it is done.

I am using a PC (not a MAC) with iTunes.  But the same logic applies.  You need an attribute changing software that can change Date created.  I use Attribute Changer by Romain Petges [Thanks Romain!].  Finally, you need to wrap your head around how Apple sorts these attributes, what happens to these attributes when you copy, cut, paste and edit these photos; and understand their last and most intriguing ‘iPod Photo Cache’ folder.

Get some chips cause this gets interesting…

Apple iPhone sorts according to the Date created of a photo/video.  A photo taken from your iPhone (or digital camera) in .jpg format consists of numerous attributes. The important attribute is the Date created.  This is the date that iPhone perceives to be the correct date to sort.  Now, if you happen to edit a photo using an App, the Date created is erased from the old photo and the new photo that you save will get a new Date created – which is the date on the iPhone on that date.  (Note that I am not talking about the inbuilt photo editing inside iPhone’s Photos app. I am talking about Aviary, ACDSee etc.)  And that’s why your newly edited photos lands up right at the end of the photos in your album.  And strangely enough, that edited photo doesn’t change its sorted position after more edits.  Why?  Because the Date created remains the same.

The next important thing to note is that when you receive photos via Whatsapp, iMessage, Email etc, the photo does not come along with the Date created.  So what happens? When you save your photo from Whatsapp to the iPhone Photos, the Date created is the date you saved it.  iPhone looks at the Date created and sorts it to that date, which is the date you copied your photo to the photo album.

Phew now that’s clear – I presume I can start a whole new life with dates.  But hang on!! Remember that time when you copied a photo to your PC/MAC and everything went haywire?  Sorry to say that dates take on a life of its own when you copy or cut and paste a photo.  So here’s reason.  When you copy a photo from the iPhone to your PC/MAC, the Date created is changed! And what does it change to? The date of your PC/MAC.  Wait! There’s more to this conundrum!  What? You ask – more? Yes more.

Did you know that when you move (cut and paste) a photo, the Date created remains the same (i.e. the original Date created before the move).  OMG!!  No wonder my photos are jumping all over!  Well, the good news is that the iPhone is not to blame.

Okay – can you get back to doing wonderful stuff with your photos? Nope.  What? Still more? Yes. Still more.

There’s one last thing about iTunes. It does things you don’t know!  Like you didn’t know that already.  It creates a special folder called ‘iPod Photo Cache’ when you indicate you want to sync that folder in iTunes.  Frankly, I don’t know how it works but deleting it is always works.  Why?  Well, it seems [note that I have not deciphered how this folder works and going on a hunch] that this folder remembers your synced iPhone album photos – even when you don’t want it to.  So, when you sync your folder of photos to your iPhone, you notice the ‘iPod Photo Cache’ folder in the folder with your photos. Then you decide to edit a photo using your nifty Photoshop and overwrite the original.  Apparently, when you sync that folder again, iTunes asks that iPod Photo Cache if anything has changed?  The iPod Photo Cache then compares itself with the parent folder.  Since all the photos are there (even though one has been edited), it says everything is good – No changes.  So, your newly edited photo does not get synced with the iPhone.

One way of overriding this is to delete the iPod Photo Cache before syncing and let iTunes regenerate a new iPod Photo Cache.  A bit of a chore when you have a thousand photos to sync. The other way is to remove the photo from the folder, sync, replace the photo into the folder and sync again.  Now the new photo gets into your iPhone.

Why this long story? Well mate, this applies to the Date created attribute as well.  If you Save (aka as overwrite the original photo, the Date created remains the same.  If you Save as…, the new photo will have the Date created as the date you Saved as…. You know how some people like backups?  They like to Save as… a photo to the new folder then delete the original when safe to do so.  This CHANGES the Date created date!!

That’s it – I’ve covered the background.  So, in order to order your photos in order, use Attribute Changer to change the Date created (and of course the time).

And now that you’ve understood how Date created on photos work, it’s the same for videos.  iPhone sees the video’s Date created and sorts it according to the rest of the photos.  So, if you happen to have an iPhone taken video taken in between your vacation photos; and decide to edit the video, the newly saved video will have a new Date created.

Do note that the iPhone Photo app does not actually edit and overwrite your original photos on the iPhone.  It creates an accompanying file with a .AAE extension.  This accompanying files hold the edited information of the photo. Thus, the original photo Date created is never touched.

So in summary, it is better to cut and paste your photos from your iPhone to your PC/MAC to preserve the Date created date, which is the date that you took the picture.  However, all is not lost if you happen to copy and paste and then delete the photos on the iPhone.  The photos should have the Date taken attribute preserved – which is the date the photos were taken.  Use Attribute Changer to set the Date created to that of the Date taken.  No joy though for videos and photos that were save from Whatsapp or iMessage. <- Those photos do not have the Date taken attribute when saved.

The quick and dirty way to order your photos is to copy your photos to a new folder one by one in the order you wish to see them; and then sync that folder.  The Date created for each photo will get younger and younger when you copy to the new folder.

Good luck!

* Please note that parts have been been edited due to my bad thinking the photos were sorted by Date taken.