David,
It doesn't help much though. Sorting by {aspect} seems like the nearest there is to a solution but I find that while it sorts *most* of the images correctly there are a good few landscapes among the portraits and vice versa. I see no reason why the wrongly sorted images should be out of place. I don't know if PM sorts on the rotated aspect or on the original aspect but anyway these are not rotated.
Yes, I believe that the aspect ratio is based on the rotated images. Sorry I can't be more exact in my answer, I am on vacation and I don't have access to my development system at this time. Perhaps you could try soft rotating the images that are out of sorts?
After an {aspect} search I see a series of portrait images with a few landscapes scattered among them. See attached screenshot. These are recent digital pictures but I see the same with old scans too.
If I soft rotate an image then its sort order changes as it should so PM is sorting according to the rotation set by the user (good).
Soft rotating individual images to correct the sort order will mean that they are shown in the correct order but 90 degrees rotated which is not so good. I need this sort to reduce the number of images found from a search to speed up finding what I'm looking for. Clearly I can't sort all the 200k+ images and then rotate the ones that are out of place so as there are random misplaced images selecting a complete run of the desired format images will exclude a few that may include the ones I need.
This sort sometimes is almost instant but more often runs very slowly, with 'preloading metatdata' showing at bottom left and sometimes taking 5 or more minutes sorting a set of about 1200. On occasions the progress bar stops part way along and never completes.
Another anomaly is that some sorts give portrait first and others give landscape first. It doesn't really matter but may be a clue to what's happening?
And - remember that you are on vacation Kirk. This can wait!
David