PM6 - Default sort order in contact sheet

[William R Wood]

I need to find my photos, not a pro, we just take a lot of pics with our phones and camera.

Just installed PM6 and immediately found one huge advantage over PM5 - I can now open our top line folder (called Photos) using "Open folder and subfolders in new contact sheet" and all 50k images in our database are loaded into a new contact sheet pretty fast and I can scan thru the thumbs and previews real fast. PM5 would crawl under that load.

My question is when the new contact sheet first opens which is pretty fast, only a few seconds, the images are sorted by Type???
Why is that when I have Preferences set to use Capture Time as the default sort method. After the new contact first opens sorted by Type, I then see the Sort progress bar at the lower right of the screen start to run and, after a long time, maybe 5 minutes, the sort order in the new contact sheet changes to Capture Time. This is weird, why doesn't PM just sort it my Capture Time in the first place?

Plus every time I close PM6 and then reopen it later it does the same thing - it opens the giant contact sheet of 50k images fast but sorted by Type then it automatically starts sorting again which takes about 5 minutes and finally changes the sort order to Capture Time. This is also weird, why doesn't PM6 save the sort order instead of resorting by Capture Time over and over?

In any event once the giant contact sheet is opened and sorted by Capture Time it is pretty easy to find my photos. If I have any trouble I simply use the Find feature set to look only for keywords and PM6 then searches all 50k images real fast and finds my photos, its great.

It would be really nice if PM6 would sort my new contact sheets by Capture Time instead of somehow first sorting by Type.

Thanks

Bill Wood

[Kirk Baker]

Bill,

I need to find my photos, not a pro, we just take a lot of pics with our phones and camera.

Just installed PM6 and immediately found one huge advantage over PM5 - I can now open our top line folder (called Photos) using "Open folder and subfolders in new contact sheet" and all 50k images in our database are loaded into a new contact sheet pretty fast and I can scan thru the thumbs and previews real fast. PM5 would crawl under that load.

My question is when the new contact sheet first opens which is pretty fast, only a few seconds, the images are sorted by Type???
Why is that when I have Preferences set to use Capture Time as the default sort method. After the new contact first opens sorted by Type, I then see the Sort progress bar at the lower right of the screen start to run and, after a long time, maybe 5 minutes, the sort order in the new contact sheet changes to Capture Time. This is weird, why doesn't PM just sort it my Capture Time in the first place?

Because you would have had to wait 5 minutes to work with any of your images.  There's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to gathering metadata.  In order to get the 50k images sorted by Capture Time, PM would have to open each of the 50k images and parse the metadata from them and once it did all of that, it could finally produce the correct sort.

So we let it work in the background and when it completes then it performs the sort.  Being able to work with the images immediately is valuable, but if having the sort be accurate from the beginning is the most important aspect for you then we'll have to offer an option for you to wait for the metadata gathering/sorting/filtering to complete before being able to work with your images.

Plus every time I close PM6 and then reopen it later it does the same thing - it opens the giant contact sheet of 50k images fast but sorted by Type then it automatically starts sorting again which takes about 5 minutes and finally changes the sort order to Capture Time. This is also weird, why doesn't PM6 save the sort order instead of resorting by Capture Time over and over?

Photo Mechanic does save some of that sort data to a database and checks the file modification time compared against the time stored in the database (PM5 did this too), but hitting the filesystem for that information still isn't instantaneous, and if a file turns out to be modified since the time that the sort information was stored then PM still has to open the file and parse out the metadata (it will then update the sort cache database).  If your sort cache database is damaged, then the sort caching won't work so that could be an issue based on your description.

It would be really nice if PM6 would sort my new contact sheets by Capture Time instead of somehow first sorting by Type.

I haven't seen a user's sort choice be changed from what they set their default to so maybe there is a bug in the code, but at any rate, right now the work is done in the background and finalized in the foreground (quickly).

What OS are you running?

-Kirk

[TKlitzsch]

I feel the same way. When I sort my photos by Capture Time it takes a long time. If I then search for a photo, the program collapses and stops responding. (Akitivitätsanzeige indicates it.) Can then only end immediately. Sorting by Name or Mogification Time is very fast only search takes a long time or does not respond. (Macbook Pro, OS 10.14.4)

Thomas

[William R Wood]

Bill,

I need to find my photos, not a pro, we just take a lot of pics with our phones and camera.

Just installed PM6 and immediately found one huge advantage over PM5 - I can now open our top line folder (called Photos) using "Open folder and subfolders in new contact sheet" and all 50k images in our database are loaded into a new contact sheet pretty fast and I can scan thru the thumbs and previews real fast. PM5 would crawl under that load.

My question is when the new contact sheet first opens which is pretty fast, only a few seconds, the images are sorted by Type???
Why is that when I have Preferences set to use Capture Time as the default sort method. After the new contact first opens sorted by Type, I then see the Sort progress bar at the lower right of the screen start to run and, after a long time, maybe 5 minutes, the sort order in the new contact sheet changes to Capture Time. This is weird, why doesn't PM just sort it my Capture Time in the first place?

Because you would have had to wait 5 minutes to work with any of your images.  There's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes to gathering metadata.  In order to get the 50k images sorted by Capture Time, PM would have to open each of the 50k images and parse the metadata from them and once it did all of that, it could finally produce the correct sort.

So we let it work in the background and when it completes then it performs the sort.  Being able to work with the images immediately is valuable, but if having the sort be accurate from the beginning is the most important aspect for you then we'll have to offer an option for you to wait for the metadata gathering/sorting/filtering to complete before being able to work with your images.

Ok, I can see that presenting the images the fastest way possible makes sense for most users!
I fiddled with this issue a little more and discovered that PM6 is in fact sorting the full 50k image contact sheet by Filename by default, not by Type (even though I have Capture Time set as the default sort). For my images Filename and Type produce the same sorting arrangement since I do not rename the photos but sorting by Type takes way longer than sorting by Filename. Just for your info, sorting 50k images by Filename only takes 6 seconds - that is pretty fast!

For me, and presumably some other users, I would prefer that PM6 use my default sort setting in Preferences (normally Capture Time) even though it will take a lot longer to open a huge contact sheet. As I said I am not a pro and don't mind waiting but I do mind the sheet opening fast sorted by Filename since I can't fine my pictures by browsing thru filenames but I can find them fast by looking at the dates. So I would request a setting in Preferences to fix that if it's not too much trouble.

What OS are you running?

Win10 Pro on on an Intel Xeon 64bit laptop with 32GB ram.