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How to Sort Digital Photos

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The modern digital photo is more than an image; it is an image that is tagged with important information.  This lets you easily find the photo later.  Scanned photos do not have any information tagged to them.  So, just scanning the image is not enough to truly digitize that old printed photo.  Therefore when scanning photos, ensure you scan the image and give it a tag so you can find it later.  A great way to to this is by writing a caption (see how here), in the caption field of ScanSpeeder, which embeds the caption in your photo, thereby giving it a tag.  This tag is then called the photo's title in Windows File Explorer, so your scanned photo can be easily found later by searching on its title.   In other words, the caption in Scanspeeder is saved as the photo's title in Windows, which is the tag used to find it later.  

Windows File Explorer lets you search tagged scanned photos and modern digital photos with its search field.  To see how to do this, refer to the article, "how to find a scanned photo".  Typically in File Explorer you use a view that lets you see the image of the photos you searched for because its easier to view photos by image.  Sometimes though its the titles of the photos you want to see.  There are many reasons to sort by photo title, such as when creating slide shows. 

  

Step-by-Step: Sorting Digital Photos and Scanned Photos 

Modern digital photos and scanned photos that are tagged, can be found by searching in Windows File Explorer.   Tagging also lets you use the many great photo organizing software packages on the market today.   How can you scan and tag photos?  With photo scanning software ScanSpeeder that batch scans multiple photos images (see how hereand lets you convert the old paper photo to digital by giving the scanned photo a tag.  The tag is added when you write the details of the photo to capture its context in the caption field of ScanSpeeder.  This tag is then embedded in the photo as the photo's title in Windows.  Refer to the article, "how to add a caption"  to see how to add a tag (which is also the caption) when scanning photos.

In Windows, a way to search photos is with the photo's title which can be found in File Explorer.  Most people like to see photo search results in File Explorer by image (icons or tiles); however, there are times when you may want to view titles of the photos instead and to be able to sort photos by the titles.  For example: I like to sort by photo title when when creating slide shows and specialized photo albums.  File Explorer makes it very simple.  

Follow the steps below if you would like to view and sort photo titles.

 

1 - Open File Explorer

The easiest way to do this, with the least amount of work, is to open it directly from ScanSpeeder.

Click the “Open Folder” button in ScanSpeeder after you have saved your photos in Step 3 - Save Files.  This will open Windows File Explorer for you directly in the folder that you saved your photos into.

open file explorer from scanspeeder

 

Another way to open File Explorer is from the bottom tray of your screen as seen in the screen shot below of Windows 10. You then need to manually open the folder that houses your photos.  

 

windows 10 file explorer

 

2 - Open the View Tab

With File Explorer and the folder open that houses your photos, click on the View tab (as shown below labelled #1).

Then click the Details option in the tab (as shown below labelled #2).

By default, File Explorer does NOT show you the title column. So, click the "Add columns" next (as shown below labelled #3).

Then, under "Add Columns" click "Choose columns..."

 

search by photo title

 

After selecting "Choose columns...", you will be presented with options similar to the screen shot below.  Scroll down the list until you see the "Title" option.  Click the box in front of "Title" and then click the OK button at the bottom.  

 

title column in file explorer

 

Now my view of the photos is in the "Details View" with the column  "Titles" exposed, as seen below.  These photo titles are the captions I wrote in the caption field of ScanSpeeder when I scanned the photos.  The captions were embedded in the photo and saved as the photo's title in Windows.

(Please note: The year 1978 is highlighted because I searched for all my photos from 1978 prior to showing you how to view your photos by title. To search photos, see this article.)   

 

In this view of File Explorer I can click the "title column's" title, as shown below with the arrow, to sort the photos.  (In this case, the title column's title is "Title".)

A few sorting options are available.  You can click the title of the column directly which sorts alphabetically (ascending or descending).  You can also click the down arrow at the far right-hand side of the title of the column which exposes more ways to sort, such as: 1-9, A to H, Q - Z, etc.  This allows for more refined sorting.  You just click the box next to the sort option that suits your needs and photo titles will be sorted.  

 

sort photo by title

To recap: Scanned photos are only searchable when tags are added in the scanning process, which ScanSpeeder's photo scanning software lets you do with its caption feature; batch scan multiple photos' images, add searchable tabs, and then automatically split the photos into files (JPEG and TIFF simultaneously).   Tagged photos are easily searchable in Windows File Explorer.  Photos can be viewed in File Explorer by image icons, tiles, list, content, and detail.  In this case we used the details view to see our photos' titles and to sort our photos by title because the photo's title is the tag ScanSpeeder gives a scanned photo.  

 

| Categories: How To | Tags: sort by title, photo title, find photo, sort photos | View Count: (7554) | Return

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