Set sort order of Photos and Videos when Exporting

In this video, I’m going to show you how you can change the sort order that photos and videos are exported from the Photos app on the Mac. Let’s go to my Mac.

So I’m in my Photos app and I’m looking at my library. If I were to export these out, what it would do is export them out in chronological order by when they were taken. So it will be sorted from the oldest photos to the newest photos. As an example, I have some Disney photos here. We can see, I have a photo of Beth and I in the Magic Kingdom. If we go towards the end here, I have a photo of an elephant from the Animal Kingdom. If I were to export these out, let’s go ahead and select my first one here, it’s selected, I hold down the command key and I select the last one here. I have these two photos selected. If I were to export these out it would export them out in the same order that I have them here.

Let’s go ahead and do that and see what I mean. So I go up under File in the menu bar. And then we go over to Export. I’m going to select Export to Photos. I want to export my modified versions. I’ve auto enhanced these, I’ve cropped these. So now I select this. From here I select that I want to have JPEGs, and then I just go over to Export. I select what folder, I’m going to keep it with my Exported Photos. Click on Export. And now it’s exporting those out. So now let’s hide this. I go up under Photos in the menu bar, and then we go over to Hide Photos.

So I have my Exported Photos here, double click on it to open it up and we can see my two photos. So as I mentioned earlier, when I exported these out, it exported them in the order that they were in my Photos library. So the first photo here is going to be of Beth and I in the Magic Kingdom. The second photo here is going to be of Animal Kingdom.

Now let’s say I wanted to switch this around. I want to change the order of these photos. Maybe we went to Animal Kingdom first, and then we went to the Magic Kingdom, or I want to change the narrative of my story. So I need to switch these around.

How can I change how these are exported so they’re in the proper order or the order that I want? Well, the first thing we need to do is we need to create an album. So now I’m going to go back over to my Photos app. And now I create a new album. I place all of the photos that I want in that album.

So let’s go with my two photos here. I have them both selected. Now I just go up under File in the menu bar, and then we go over to New Album with Selection. So it’s going to include both of those photos. So there they are. Now, what I can do is I can change the sort order of these, if I want Animal Kingdom first, I just drag this over to the left before it, and now Animal Kingdom is first. So if you have a lot of photos, what you can now do when they’re on an album is change how they are sorted. Once you change how they are sorted, you just place them in the order that you want. When you export them out, you can actually have it export it out in the same order. So now I have Animal Kingdom first.

Let’s go and export these out and see how I can export them out in the same order. I select both photos. So I have them selected, I go up under File again. And then we go over to Export. Again, I export my two photos. But here’s where we start making a change.

Down towards the bottom, you’re going to see we have File Naming. From here, what I need to do is I need to select File Name, and then I use Sequential. So now what it’s going to do is it’s going to put a number in there in sequential order. So in my case here, it’s going to be one and two because I have two photos. So let’s go ahead and select this. I’m going to apply a prefix. So let’s just call this Disney with a dash. And now I just go to Export.

When I export this out, what it’s going to do is name my first photo here, Disney one. This is of Animal Kingdom, and my second photo Disney two. So now let’s go and export this out. I click on Export. I’m going to hide this. We can see, we have my Disney one, disney two. And when I select the first one, we’re going to see it as of Animal Kingdom. When I go to the second one, it is of Magic Kingdom. So I changed the sort order.

Let’s do this one more time. I go back over to Photos. Now I’m going to reverse it. Let’s bring it back to how it was. I bring Magic Kingdom first. I select them both. I go up under File. I go over to Export. I export the two photos. I make sure that I have Sequential selected. We’re just going to call this Disney World. I Export, I click on Export to confirm the folder. I hide it. And now when we go over to Disney World here, the first one is going to be a Magic Kingdom. The second one is going to be Animal Kingdom. So by using an album, I was able to change how these are exported.

So that’s how we set how our photos and videos are exported in the Photos app. The first thing we need to do is we need to place all of our photos and videos into album. When they’re in an album, What were able to do is actually drag the photos and videos around to the proper order. Once we have them in the proper order or how we want, then what we do is we go up under File and go to Export. When we export them out, we need to make sure that we select Sequential under File Name, because we’re going to name them in sequential order, the way that they are in our album. Once you set the file name to be Sequential, you click on Export, set, where you want to export these photos and videos too. And the Photos app will export them out in the order that you have them in your album.

So that’s how you can export photos and videos in a specific order in the Photos app on the Mac.