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[darichman]

In summary: How can I create a view which groups photos by album (newest to oldest) but keeps albums from different years separate?

I'm trying to set up a particular view scheme to view my photos, but I'm having an issue using Album groupings (by date)...

First an overview of how I do things -
I have a photo library of about 800 albums, which I organise with the standard [Date] and [Album] fields as well as a whole bunch of my own fields.
I use [Album] as a generic grouping - it might be an event or just a descriptive to logically tie like files in together (eg Nature Shots, Melbourne Trip)
Some albums span many years (eg Nature Shots, Baby Amy) or are similar events distinct from each other in time (eg "Japan Trip" which occurred in 1999, 2002 and 2004)

At the moment, I have a Panes + Thumbnails view, with a grouping of Album (by date)
...and I really like this setup. It provides a clear distinction between different albums and sorts them most recent to oldest for me, while photos within the group can be sorted separately.

My problem is, when albums have photos with a whole bunch of dates... this view doesn't work.
What logic is MC using to sort the Groups themselves, when the files contain multiple dates? I seem to remember it being based on an average date... but there may have been a recent change which made it based on the earliest date. What this means is, that if I'm browsing for my "Japan Trip" photos taken in 2004, I have to go all the way down to 1999 to see them. Similarly, I'll be browsing the albums in 1983 only to see "Baby Amy" which includes photos not only from 1983, but also from 1984 and 1985 all in the one "grouping". This kinda ruins the chronology and flow when you're browsing albums.

I'm reticent to append (Year) in the album field, as that's getting a bit redundant (it's already in the date field) and some albums need to have the same title, despite spanning an extended time period (eg Nature Shots)

Is there another way I can do this, so that I can get MC to delimit the groupings based on year, or month?
I've tried creating a [Album] ([Year]) custom expression field and using this as the grouping field, but there's no way to sort it but alphabetically, which isn't of use.

Any advice?

[mabes]

Can't you "sort within groups" by date?

[Matt]

What if you just added the year as a pane?

Or created a calculated field like [Album] - [Year] and used it for grouping?

Or used different album names for each Japan trip?

[darichman]

Thanks for the replies.

Can't you "sort within groups" by date?

Yes, but not what I was asking. The files within a group are easy to sort, it's the groups themselves I'm having trouble with.

What if you just added the year as a pane?

Yes, I do... the key here is browsing, ideally when the panes are hidden. It is good to be able to scroll through albums over a couple of years, without having a year filter on. That way I can start now, and go back as far as I want without having to reset the year filter. Similarly, by double-clicking and starting image playback, it would be good to flick through from most recent to oldest without having to stop and then select a new year from the panes.

Or used different album names for each Japan trip?

I've considered it. Unique album names certainly do have some advantages - but I decided against doing this for a number of reasons:
1. Some albums which span many years are logically grouped together and it is important, in other views at least, to be able to view them together when you need to. Nature shots for example. (Yes, I like nature shots )
2. Adding year to the standard album field seemed redundant to me (it's already in the date field)

Or created a calculated field like [Album] - [Year] and used it for grouping?

I've tried creating a [Album] ([Year]) custom expression field. Using this as a field for grouping would definitely separate them out into years () but there's no way for me to sort it by date (). Alphabetical is the only option, otherwise this would be the way to go. Would it be a lot of work to expand the (...by date) functionality to other fields?

Thanks Matt, you've offered a few suggestions and I know I've knocked them down After considering this, it looks like it's not possible at the moment, with the current setup at least. I'm not prepared to change anything major in the library (not being lazy, it'll just break some other things if I change how I handle albums) and unless it's an easy fix I certainly don't expect you to rewrite the group sort engine for this. So I guess I'll have to deal with it or settle for filtering a year at a time...

[marko]

I'm finding the various obstacles a bit hard to visualise so forgive me if what follows is somewhat on the obtuse side, but, if you simply switched around the expression based grouping field to read [Year] - [Album], You get a chronological overview, and albums that contained different years would break out into seperate 'year' groups...

I'm guessing that this approach probably misses the target elsewhere in the list?

-marko.

[darichman]

Thanks Marko.

[Year] - [Album] would, indeed, separate the albums into respective years AND allow you to sort by year.

The only (minor, niggly, less-than-perfect) limitation of this approach is that it gets rid of chronology within a year. Ie You can't browse backwards from most recent... only from 2008 - A... to 2008 - Z... etc

Way to make things complicated, darichman

Haha I know my request is abstract ... and probably reflects my borderline obsessive-compulsive tendencies to get things 'just' right... was just hoping there was a way within the current infrastructure I was overlooking that would help me get rid of one of those niggly little things that's been bothering me for a while

I think the only way around this would be to allow group sorting (eg like the Album... by date, but for other fields as well).
Or alternatively to modify the logic of the existing Album (by date) group option to take this into account.

I'll hazard a guess and say that both of these might make things complicated though