Sorting Photographic files

[Palustris]

Not sure which section of AB in which to ak this, so here goes. I have a huge folder full of photgraphs. I wish to sort them by the date on which they were taken (stored in the Exif file data). At present sorting folder contents produces the result of April 2008 showing before March 2003. Is there ought I can do or is there a readily available program I can load the pics into, so I can sort them the way I want? TIA

[Buenchico]

Amend the file names, so that they start with the date extracted from the Exif data. Then simply use 'arrange by name' to place them in date order.

So, how do you amend the filenames? Easy:
http://www.download.com/Stamp/3000-12511_4-102 92890.html?tag=lst-2

Alternatively, if you'd prefer a program which does the same thing but also incorporates its own image browser, try this:
http://www.download.com/Ai-Picture-Utility/300 0-2192_4-10015439.html?tag=lst-1

Chris

[Aquariel]

There's a much easier way than renaming them all, which I use:

Firstly, go into "My Computer" and into the folder containing your photographs. Now, right-click on any of the column headers (Name, Size, Type, Date Created etc.) - this should give you a list of other attributes you can have displayed in the explorer window. If you select "More" at the bottom of this menu, you will be able to choose "Date Picture Taken" and you can then sort on this column as usual.

[Palustris]

Thanks folks.
We are talking here of 10 gig of pictures so amending the names of everyone is not really a viable option.
The second method is what I have already tried and as I said, it sorts according to Day/ Month/ Year when I want to sort by Year/ Month/ Day. The Exif data is stored as Day/ month/ year.

[fo3nix]

I'd recommend you use Picasa. It's an image library app, and works pretty well:

http://picasa.google.com/

[Aquariel]

You want to sort from earliest to latest, right? Not to patronise you or anything, but the method I mentioned above sorts in precisely that way, i.e. by the date the picture was taken; therefore March 2003 comes before April 2008 - this is taken from the EXIF data ... sounds like for some reason Windows is sorting alphabetically on the month name for you ...

Or have I completely missed your point?

[Buenchico]

The discrepancy between Aquariel's answer and Palustris's experience might be due to different operating systems. Windows ME, and earlier version of Windows, definitely don't allow you to use Aquariel's method. Windows Vista does but I'm not sure about XP.

Renaming the files can be done in a matter of seconds with the software I've suggested. They use batch processing techniques so you simply have to tell the software which folder (e.g. 'My Pictures') you want it to work with and it will automatically rename every picture in that folder, putting the date at the start of the filename.

Chris

[Palustris]

Thank-you all again. I think I have cracked it now. Finepix (came with the camera) does Batch processing of various kinds. It also sorts the pics into date order, but earliest to last but that will do me for what I want to do.
This is the trouble with working on Vista on one machine and XP on the other.
Also got a memory problem with the machine where the pics are stroed at prent. It only has 375 ram so it very quickly gets tied up in knots.
Thanks a lot though.