Custom sorting

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Usually your images are already sorted by filename in the creation sequence of your camera, but you may want to override this for certain images. Also, if you move or copy an image to a folder which already contains sorted images, then most likely the image will not be in the desired place.

 

The sequence of files is an important aspect of the organization of images, not only for web album export or screenshows. To move single images inside a directory, you could manually rename the files as explained later. A much more efficient solution is to use the custom sorting feature of CodedColor:

 

1.Browse to the folder or catalog where you want to perform custom sorting. If you have already done custom sorting in this directory, you can skip steps 2-3.

 

2.In the Detailsview, define an initial sort order by clicking on the appropriate column header. Usually you would choose [Creation] ascending for this, as it reflects the time sequence in which the photos were taken.

 

3.Now call Initialize Custom Sorting to add numbered prefixes of the sort (00019).. to the filenames.

 

4.In step 3 the sort order is automatically changed to [Name] ascending. If you performed steps 2-3 at an earlier time, then change the sort order to [Name] Ascending (a..z) manually.

 

5.Select the file items or thumbs that you want to reposition.

 

6.Press CTRL+C (Copy Files) or CTRL+X (Cut Files). Both have the same effect.

 

 

7.Select the file, before which you want to insert the previously copied files.

 

8.Press CTRL-Y (Insert Above).

 

Hint: An alternative to the steps 6-8 is to use Drag & Drop. Click on the files to be repositioned, hold the left mouse button pressed, and only let go of it over the image in front of of which you want to position the selected files. If your image is appended to the end, your mouse pointer was not exactly over the thumb.

 

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All files in the directory are now renamed accordingly. Whenever you switch the sort order to [Name] ascending, your custom sort order will be displayed, even if you are viewing the files in other programs like the the Windows Explorer.

 

Obviously you need to have write access to the directory, so this feature does not work for CD drives. To resort files on CDs, you have to create a catalog of the images, and then apply custom sorting to this catalog. As you can already guess, the custom sorting works the same in Catalog folders containing not the originals, but linkfiles pointing to the originals.

 

To remove custom sorting from a directory, select the menuitem Remove Custom Sorting. All filenames of the form (00123)image.jpg will be restored to image.jpg, so you will loose your current custom sort order. Whenever you repeat the above steps for the first time, all files in the directory will receive the prefix "(xxxxx).." again.

 

Besides this automatic batch renaming of images in a directory, you have the following alternatives to manually change the sort order of your images:

 

Manually renaming original images

 

•If you rename a file from sunset.jpg to x_sunset.jpg, it will move to the bottom of your directory.
•If you rename a file from sunset.jpg to _sunset.jpg, it will move to the top of your directory.
•You can add numbers or characters to the beginning of the filename to move it alphabetically into a desired position. This action is done automatically by the custom sorting feature explained above.

 

Manually renaming catalog linkfiles

 

If you add the selected images to a catalog, you can manually rename the linkfiles in the catalog to fit your desired sort order. The original filenames will not be changed. So along with the advantage of putting the same image into several catalogs, you can also have different sort orders in separate catalogs. The easiest way of resorting the linkfiles inside a catalog is to add the prefix "10..", "20..", "30..", etc. to the beginning of the filenames. If you now want to position the file 30_sunset.jpg above the file 20_beach.jpg, you could for instance rename it to 15_sunset.jpg. But again, it is much easier to use our custom sorting feature explained above.

 

icon_tipImportant

 

•A big benefit of the CodedColor physical sorting technique over sorting methods that involve a database is the fact, that the sorting is not lost in other  applications. The sort order is preserved in the Windows Explorer, when archiving the files to a CD or when creating a web album. The drawback is, that this physical sorting is only possible in directories that have write access - i.e. you cannot sort images on a CD after it has been burned.

 

•For another drawback in relation to linkfiles, see Important Information in the Drag & Drop or Cut, Copy & Paste topic.

 

•Custom sorting is not supported when dragging images onto the explorer tree or in detailsview / iconview of the Explorer.

 

•Renaming in CodedColor usually preserves sound attachments. This is not the case for renaming or file operations in the detailsview / iconview of the Explorer.

 

icon_tip Related topics

 

•Filesystem sorting
•What's the difference between file date and photo date?

 

 

 

 

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