It's not the operating system...
There is no inherent sort order in the File System. In fact, the filesystem does not even place the data blocks of a file in a contiguous order on the disk drive. Finder sorted its result based upon the "Arrangement" setting in Finder. LR sorts the grid view based upon the setting selected or defaulted on the tool bar. File renaming in LR will be based upon the order selected on the tool bar in the grid view.
Hello, and thanks for your reply. Having a lifetime of computer experience since my first TRS-80 and Apple-II about 30 years ago, I am keenly aware of the workings of computer file systems, and that is not the issue here.
The issue is that Lightroom is picking photos at random from my memory card and assigning the sequential filenames in the wrong order.
For example lets say I shot 5 photos with my motor drive in one quick burst. Lets call them "Photo 1", "Photo 2", "Photo 3", "Photo 4" and "Photo 5". Now, let's say I want to rename all these photos to my shoot name, for example "Shootname". Lightroom should then take "Photo 1", i.e. the first photo in the sequence, and rename it "Shootname 1" and write it to the hard drive. Likewise, "Photo2" becomes "Shootname 2", Photo 3 becomes "Shootname 3", "Photo 4" becomes "Shootname 4" and finally "Photo 5" being the last one in the sequence from the camera becomes "Shootname 5".
Get it? The CORRECt and EXPECTED behavior from Lightroom should be as follows:
Photo 1 --> Shootname 1
Photo 2 --> Shootname 2
Photo 3 --> Shootname 3
Photo 4 --> Shootname 4
Photo 5 --> Shootname 5
BUT! The problem is that LR5 is PICKING RANDOM PHOTOS in a RANDOM ORDER and giving them the WRONG NAMES. So the photo NAMES are in NUMERICAL order on the external drive, BUT THE WRONG PHOTOS have those names, so the PHOTOS themselves are all mixed up, as I tried to show in the pictures above.
FOR EXAMPLE: Lightroom has been doing this strange thing:
Photo 4 --> Shootname 1
Photo 1 --> Shootname 2
Photo 5 --> Shootname 3
Photo 3 --> Shootname 4
Photo 2 --> Shootname 5
Can you see, that if Lightroom renames the photos in this random way, that even though the Filenames are indeed sequential, the ACTUAL PHOTOS THEMSELVES will be in a random order, having been INCORRECTLY RENAMED by Lightroom for some as yet unknown reason? This is the issue that I am trying to solve.
It doesn't matter that I've selected "Capture Time" as the required import order, and that the camera's clock was set correctly. I've also tried to set the import preference to "File Name" because my camera names all the files sequentially, and so that should cause it to import in the correct order, but that doesn't help either. LR5 still picks random photos from the card, instead of importing them in order. That's a big problem, and an unacceptable behavior from the software.
That is what me and EyeDontKnow are trying to get across. It's really not because we don't understand how computers work, but more that LR5 is exhibiting this unexpected random photo picking anomaly that is selecting random photos for renaming rather than renaming photos in the order we told it to do (in my case its by Capture time, and yes, I have the camera's clock set properly and there is never a "midnight" handover issue in any of these instances.
And once we solve this file naming anomaly, then there's the issue of LR5importing many random photos upside-down!
Hopefully the .plist reset will help solve this issue, but if you have any more suggestions, I am always appreciative.
Regards,
Derek