File names and ordering

peter · 2017-11-21 08:55:52

When images are imported into LR, the file name (well, 'tag'?) is changed.
For eg. the real file name is MJ-1.jpg and after import, it becomes MJ-1-11.jpg

Q1. - Is the -11 is an incremental number based on a previous import of a file of the same name?
Q2. - In Publisher, there is an option to let Lightroom manage the Photo Order. What does it do?
Q3. - If you specify 'Order by File Name', how can you get them in the correct order?
For example, this is the order I want:
MJ-1
MJ-2
etc.
So the new file names are now MJ-1-11.
If I rename to 3 digits, and specify 'Order by File Name', will I get:
MJ-001-11
MJ-002-11
etc.?

rod barbee · 2017-11-21 09:25:23

Q1. - Is the -11 is an incremental number based on a previous import of a file of the same name?

if you're literally using a file naming system of MJ-1, then the -11 part likely means you have a lot of other file names starting with MJ-1.
Personally, I'd use a different file naming system that eliminates the possibility of something like this happening. Something like:
MJ-171120-2387.jpg (initials-DateCode-OriginalCameraNumber)
or MJ-client-name-171120-4588.jpg. Whatever makes the most sense for your business.
I always come down on the side of ease and efficiency. Some people like putting keywords in filenames for SEO purposes. That's too much work for me but works great for others
Matt's got some suggestions: http://ce4.theturninggate.net/docs/doku … ile_naming

Q2. - In Publisher, there is an option to let Lightroom manage the Photo Order. What does it do?

places image in the same order you're seeing in the album collection.
You can custom order by dragging photos to new spots. Then right-click on one of them and mark to republish. When you republish, the order on the website should be the same as in Lightroom.

Q3. - If you specify 'Order by File Name', how can you get them in the correct order?

File names are sorted by standard alpha numeric parameters. Test it out and see what happens.

JimR · 2017-11-21 09:26:14

peter wrote:

When images are imported into LR, the file name (well, 'tag'?) is changed.
For eg. the real file name is MJ-1.jpg and after import, it becomes MJ-1-11.jpg

This is a question about how Lightroom imports files?

Can you explain your workflow. How do you import files? What are your LR settings? Has this always been true, or is this something new? What LR settings have you changed recently. Have you changed your workflow recently?

peter wrote:

In Publisher, there is an option to let Lightroom manage the Photo Order. What does it do?

While viewing your photos within LR, you can set their order in the toolbar below your images. You'll find Capture Time, Added Order, File Name, etc. You can also drag images to change the "custom order." If you want this order to be the order they appear on the web site, then select "Managed by Lightroom" in the TTG publisher dialog.

I can't guess what's happening with Q1 and Q3 without knowing your Lightroom workflow for importing images. When I import, LR doesn't change the name. I suspect you're getting name collisions, and LR is forced to rename them. This could happen if you actuall to have more than one file with the same name. But it can also happen based on your import settings.

Ben · 2017-11-21 09:30:00

The reason we provide an ordering setting in the album settings is because LR's handling of ordering is mostly broken for anything but custom order. For other cases, LR only sends through the photo order on first publish. Adding or changing images after that will append them last in the album. Our ordering setting in the album settings does not suffer from this problem.

peter · 2017-11-21 10:34:39

That's all good info - I should be able to figure out a change to my wife's output strategy.
I see now how 'Let Lightroom order it' works - good to know if you want to sort by name or something, then manually change things up.

peter · 2017-11-21 10:45:31

Yes, Lightroom does mess up the order...
In Publisher, I sort by File name and the files are in order. eg.
MJ-1-11, MJ-2-11 etc.
If I publish either with 'Order By File Name' or 'Managed by Lightroom', the galleries are both re-ordered (each one different, but neither matches what I see in Publisher.
What's up?

(I'm going to try re-publishing to see if that fixes it)

Last edited by peter (2017-11-21 10:52:34)

peter · 2017-11-21 11:19:41

Ben wrote:

The reason we provide an ordering setting in the album settings is because LR's handling of ordering is mostly broken for anything but custom order. For other cases, LR only sends through the photo order on first publish. Adding or changing images after that will append them last in the album. Our ordering setting in the album settings does not suffer from this problem.

Ok, so I need to not use Manage by LR.

To summarize:

When viewed in LR Publisher, after sorting by file name, they appear in Publisher like this:
MJ-1-11, MJ-2-11, MJ-3-11, MJ-4-11, MJ-5-11

With Order By File Name, they are showing in the gallery like this:
MJ-1-11, MJ-10-11, MJ-100-14, MJ-101-14, MJ-102-14

With 'Managed By Lightroom' , they are showing in the gallery like this::
MJ-4-11, MJ-5-11, MJ-6-11, MJ-1-11, MJ-11-11, MJ-12-11

So if I ignore LR and just use Backlight's 'Order By File Name', I should try to figure out how to rename them during the export process, to get them ordered correctly. I asked my wife to export starting with 001, but she said it wouldn't allow it. I can investigate...

rod barbee · 2017-11-21 11:24:59

Just don’t Use sequential renaming in Publisher, it won’t end well (a Lightroom problem)

peter · 2017-11-21 11:39:27

The order to display is very important for us. We can't use 'sort by capture time' as we use 3 different cameras that are never quite in sync throughout the day, and really off if I forget to sync them (though LR has a sync feature).
We export several several 100 files and we need those to be in the correct order online.
Any suggestions?

Edit:
I could start at 100.
That would probably do it.

Last edited by peter (2017-11-21 11:40:27)

Matthew · 2017-11-21 15:25:25

Just drag your images into the desired order then.

peter · 2017-11-21 16:09:26

Matthew wrote:

Just drag your images into the desired order then.

Lightroom seems to have a mind of its own. They are in the correct order when the images are dragged onto an album in publisher, then, as I explained, they get reordered when in Backlight.
The solution is to start the numbering at 100, and use "sort by file name'.
Easy peasy.
?

rod barbee · 2017-11-21 21:50:40

For manual ordering, make sure that Photo Order is set to Managed by Lightroom.
Order the images as needed in Lightroom
Right click on one of the images you moved and select Mark to Republish
Publish
This has always worked for me.

JimR · 2017-11-22 02:21:42

rod barbee wrote:

For manual ordering, make sure that Photo Order is set to Managed by Lightroom.
Order the images as needed in Lightroom
Right click on one of the images you moved and select Mark to Republish
Publish
This has always worked for me.

Also, make sure that at the bottom of the TTG Publisher panel, you have Lightroom set to Custom Order.

I also use Custom Order and have Backlight set to Managed by Lightroom. I drag my photos into the order I want. This has always worked, and I've done it this way for many years with TTG. I have hundreds of albums published this way.

The only time Custom Order doesn't work is when Lightroom doesn't trigger updates to Backlight. At times I can re-arrange one image but it doesn't get updated on the web site. If I mark that image to be republished, then it writes out the file in the correct order. You can probably do this with just having the metadata being updated to save a lot of time.

Another frustration with Custom Order in Lightroom is that when you first add your images into the publisher album, they are all set to "new photos to publish." At that moment you cannot set the customer order you're trying to get. You have to publish (upload all the images to your seb site) and then re-arrange them into the custom order. This can be slow and awkward. Plus, I've also ran into several bugs in Lightroom while doing this.

Peter,

My suggestion is to change your workflow. Get the files renamed in Lightroom before moving them into TTG Publisher.

After importing your images into Lightroom, reorder them as you want while they are in the Library. Then rename all the photos with a good name and sequence number. For example, "MJ-001" or something. After doing this your custom ordering will be the same as "sort by file name".

Then when you add the photos into TTG Publisher, you can simply trust Backlight to sort by file name. This way you avoid the bugs in Lightroom Publisher. You will be able to quickly create a new TTG Publisher album, and in one-click have them published to your site in the right order. It's a lot less frustration, and you don't have to worry about getting the order correct on the site and messing around in Publisher.

Last edited by JimR (2017-11-22 02:26:59)

peter · 2017-11-22 03:11:48

First, I apologize for not truly explaining my workflow. My initial post doesn't mention that I am importing a properly sorted group of photos.

My wife actually sorts files as she edits. They are initially brought in to her copy of LR by 'Date Shot'.
After she has finished editing (2 weeks of work, btw), she will export from the order she has finally finished her manual sort - some photos may be off chronologically by the end of the day, or some just fit better than the time frame suggests.

Exporting is where the file numbering is processed.
(Previously, using the old TTG plugins, she used '1' as the starting prefix, and all was ok after handing the files over to me).

It then comes to me, on my PC. I will 'Import' this set into LR, then drag into a new album folder in publisher.

From there they appear in perfect order, when I select 'sort on filename'.
Since they are showing up there how I want them, choosing the 'Managed by LR' from the Photo Order option in Edit Album, seems the logical choice. That's when it all goes 'Peter Tong'.

So I don't need to change the order manually in the Publisher view, because they are all in perfect order. It's the actual publishing that messes it all up.

If the export, (on my wife's computer), is done by choosing 100 as the starting number, then, again, importing into LR and dragging into Publisher, they appear correctly. However, this time, when I publish, they are published in the correct order.

I hope this clarifies the issue and solution.

JimR · 2017-11-22 03:30:33

peter wrote:

From there they appear in perfect order, when I select 'sort on filename'.
Since they are showing up there how I want them, choosing the 'Managed by LR' from the Photo Order option in Edit Album, seems the logical choice. That's when it all goes 'Peter Tong'.
So I don't need to change the order manually in the Publisher view, because they are all in perfect order. It's the actual publishing that messes it all up.

IF you have all the file names in the CORRECT order, then you simply want to set TTG Publisher's "Photo Order" to Order by File Name.

peter · 2017-11-22 04:05:41

JimR wrote:

peter wrote:
From there they appear in perfect order, when I select 'sort on filename'.
Since they are showing up there how I want them, choosing the 'Managed by LR' from the Photo Order option in Edit Album, seems the logical choice. That's when it all goes 'Peter Tong'.
So I don't need to change the order manually in the Publisher view, because they are all in perfect order. It's the actual publishing that messes it all up.
IF you have all the file names in the CORRECT order, then you simply want to set TTG Publisher's "Photo Order" to Order by File Name.

As I explained:

"When viewed in LR Publisher, after sorting by file name, they appear in Publisher like this:
MJ-1-11, MJ-2-11, MJ-3-11, MJ-4-11, MJ-5-11

With Order By File Name, they are showing in the gallery like this:
MJ-1-11, MJ-10-11, MJ-100-14, MJ-101-14, MJ-102-14"

TTG's file ordering will re-arrange them if the numbers are, -1, -2, -3 etc.
They have to be -001, -002, -003, otherwise you get something like this:

-1, -10, -11, -12, -13, -14, -15, -16, -17, -18, -19, -2, -20

JimR · 2017-11-22 04:45:48

peter wrote:

TTG's file ordering will re-arrange them if the numbers are, -1, -2, -3 etc.
They have to be -001, -002, -003, otherwise you get something like this:
-1, -10, -11, -12, -13, -14, -15, -16, -17, -18, -19, -2, -20

The ordering you're objecting to is the actual sort order for such file names. The order you find on your web site is the proper order according to the file names you're showing.

That's why I said "IF you have all the file names in the CORRECT order" - it will work.

But file names like "MJ-1-11" an "MJ-10-11" will not sort as you are expecting them to.

In the two examples above, the fifth character is "-" in the first one, and "0" in the second. 0 comes before - in sort order.

I would expect if you viewed your list of files in your computer's desktop, you'd find they sort in the same way as you find them on the web server.

What you want to do, going back to my previous recommendation, is to create good file names that sort properly. You can rename files using many patterns, such as a prefix (e.g. "MJ") and a sequence number (e.g. "-001").

You need to get rid of that problematic pattern of that number sequence in the middle. The problem with it is that it's an inconsistent number of digits.

You can't expect a proper sort to be based on numbers like: 1, 10, 100, 11, 110, 111.

The "problem" you're seeing in Lightroom Publisher is that LR is NOT showing the "correct" order. Apparently it's ASSUMING the middle sequence is a number, and NOT characters. THis is a BAD assumption. It's a BUG in LR.

You can try viewing your list of files in their actual order by looking at your directory of those images in your desktop. Click on one of the images in LR and choose "show in desktop" or what ever it's called on your Windows system (I'm a Mac user).

View that window on your Windows desktop, using a list view, and sort by file name. You should find the order there matches what you find on your web site.

If you are going to use numbers to sort your file names, then they ALL MUST HAVE THE SAME NUMBER OF DIGITS.

You can do this, as I was suggesting, using Lightroom's Library to rename your files.

Let me give you an example. Here's a simple list using just one pattern of digits. I dropped your "-11" suffix to make it more clear. Look at how these names actually sort.

MJ-001
MJ-01
MJ-010
MJ-1
MJ-10
MJ-100
MJ-11
MJ-2
MJ-20
MJ-200
MJ-22
MJ-3

As you can see, you cannot use a mixed number of digits in the file name and expect them to sort "correctly." You need to have all files with the SAME NUMBER of digits. Here's a similar list, using three digits, and how it would sort.

MJ-001
MJ-002
MJ-003
MJ-010
MJ-011
MJ-020
MJ-022
MJ-100
MJ-200

To sum up.

You're looking at a flawed sorting in Lightroom's Publisher.
Sorting by file names that use numeric sequences require you use a consistent number of digits and patten in all file names.

Last edited by JimR (2017-11-22 06:28:39)

peter · 2017-11-22 05:29:59

I swear I'm going crazy.
The Manage by Lightroom is working on all the galleries as it appeared in LR.
I had one gallery that was being published (managed by LR) differently, so I had to use numbers starting at 100 to fix it.
Is LR making me crazy? Or has this happened to anyone else?

rod barbee · 2017-11-22 05:53:01

Is LR making me crazy? Or has this happened to anyone else?

At some point, Lightroom will make us all crazy....

JimR · 2017-11-22 06:01:41

peter wrote:

Is LR making me crazy? Or has this happened to anyone else?

First questions, most likely yes, but it's not just Lightroom but a number of other computer-geeky things. Second question, most likely no if they understand computer-geeky things and have enough experience publishing from Lightroom.

Most importantly, to help save your sanity, it's not random. It's doing exactly the same thing it's always done for everyone, in a very predictable way. I outlined how sorting actually works.

The part that's driving you crazy is when you SEE it working (when it's just luck but you think it was working) and SEE it wrong, when it's not (and think something is wrong).

To make this predictable for you, and to stop driving you crazy, you need to change your file naming convention.

You MUST use a consistent number of digits and pattern(s) in ALL the files for any given collection.

Read that last line again and again until you understand that entirely. If you start getting crazy about sort order, repeat that rule to yourself and look for how you violated the rule.

Here's the workflow I'm recommending to save your sanity and save you hours of needlessly wasted time.

All files as they are being imported, especially from multiple cameras or multiple sources, need to have the same file naming convention.

For example, if you use a prefix such as the name of the shoot or initials or whatever, then all the photos should have that exact same prefix.

Even MORE IMPORTANT, all the files need to use the same number of digits if you expect sorting by file name to ever work. For example, if you will have less than 1,000 photos in a collection then use three digits (e.g. 001, 002, 003...999). If you ever have less than 10,000 then you need to use four digits.

All files as they are being imported, especially from multiple cameras or multiple sources, must never have the same file name. When LR finds a duplicate name in the same collection, it must change the file name and does so by adding a suffix (e.g. "xxx-11" because it found ten other previous duplicate names). This additional numbering pattern being added to your file name will make you crazy. It will also interfere with later renaming files. (read that last sentence again and again, this will bite you as you try renaming them if you have such a problem).

To prevent the duplicate name problem from multiple sources, use a unique identifier for each source. For example, for two photographers named Joe and Bob, have them submit their files as "joe-event-001" and "bob-event-001". Just realize that the name of the files during import is to avoid duplicate names. You are going to RENAME all files AFTER you have them in a single collection within Lightroom.

Once you have ALL FILES in the collection imported, you can re-sort them however you wish (file name, capture time, etc). If you want a custom order, then drag them while in the Library into the order you want. AFTER getting them all in the order you want, THEN AND ONLY THEN rename all the files using the LR Rename option. Create a name template for this, such as "custom text"-{xxx} where the last three digits are a sequence. Note, you are setting the order and renaming all files while in the Lightroom Library (not within the Publisher).

After renaming your files to have a consistent naming convention, and all have the same number of digits, then and only then do you move on to adding them to Lightroom's Publisher.

Once the photos are in the TTG Publisher, avoid the "managed by Lightroom" option, the part that is driving you crazy.

Once you have all the files in a TTG Publisher album, select "sort by file name" within the TTG Publisher dialog. Note I'm suggesting you ignore the Lightroom sorting options. You're going to set the sort preference using TTG Publisher.

Click Publish and you will find the files on your web site in the same order you choose while in the Lightroom Library, which is going to be the same as you see them in the Publisher.

Last edited by JimR (2017-11-22 06:26:58)

charlie.choc · 2017-11-22 06:05:53

Excellent description of how sorting works.

Matthew · 2017-11-22 11:29:25

Thumbs up, Jim!

Community @ The Turning Gate

#1 2017-11-21 08:55:52

File names and ordering

#2 2017-11-21 09:25:23

Re: File names and ordering

#3 2017-11-21 09:26:14

Re: File names and ordering

#4 2017-11-21 09:30:00

Re: File names and ordering

#5 2017-11-21 10:34:39

Re: File names and ordering

#6 2017-11-21 10:45:31

Re: File names and ordering

#7 2017-11-21 11:19:41

Re: File names and ordering

#8 2017-11-21 11:24:59

Re: File names and ordering

#9 2017-11-21 11:39:27

Re: File names and ordering

#10 2017-11-21 15:25:25

Re: File names and ordering

#11 2017-11-21 16:09:26

Re: File names and ordering

#12 2017-11-21 21:50:40

Re: File names and ordering

#13 2017-11-22 02:21:42

Re: File names and ordering

#14 2017-11-22 03:11:48

Re: File names and ordering

#15 2017-11-22 03:30:33

Re: File names and ordering

#16 2017-11-22 04:05:41

Re: File names and ordering

#17 2017-11-22 04:45:48

Re: File names and ordering

#18 2017-11-22 05:29:59

Re: File names and ordering

#19 2017-11-22 05:53:01

Re: File names and ordering

#20 2017-11-22 06:01:41

Re: File names and ordering

#21 2017-11-22 06:05:53

Re: File names and ordering

#22 2017-11-22 11:29:25

Re: File names and ordering

Board footer