Gallery & Camera: Photo roll confusion

asked 2015-05-22 19:40:48 +0300

Okw gravatar image

updated 2015-05-23 00:35:08 +0300

Let's take a look at how photos are ordered in picture gallery and the camera application. The list is sorted by time. P0 is the oldest, and Pn is the most recent photo.

Camera: [P0] - [P1] - [...] - [Pn-1] - [Pn] - [camera]

Gallery: [Pn] - [Pn-1] - [...] - [P1] - [P0] - [Pn] - [Pn-1] ...

I think this is quite confusing. Pictures are sorted in opposite ways between these two apps. This is troublesome in a situation where the camera is put to background with a preview on the screen and you need to quickly take a picture. After opening the camera and seeing the preview picture you often start scrolling to the left since you're used to the gallery sorting, which only takes you further away from the camera.

My suggestion is to reverse the gallery sorting and append new photos to the end of the list instead of the beginning. This would reflect the way traditional photo albums work; You don't shift every photo one step to the right when adding a new one. But most importantly, this way both the camera and the gallery would be consistent in listing your pictures.

This is more of a UI consistency problem than a bug. Feel free to remove bug tag if it's not appropriate.

Originally this topic suggested changing the camera ordering. On second thought it would be more logical the reverse the gallery. At this point two votes were given. I hope I'm not being reckless to these two voters. The fundamental point of this topic still remains the same.

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Comments

I see your point, but:

1) It's reasonable that in the Camera app the most recent photo is on the left side and earlier photos are further left, because "back" is generally on the left. ("Back to the photo I just took", "back to the one before that")

2) It's reasonable that in Gallery you first see the latest photo, and "more" is generally on the right.

I agree there's an inconsistency here, but I did remove the "bug" tag. :) Personally, I don't see this as problem. At least iOS and WP have this same inconsistency; I think it's not a bug but a result of deliberation, thought to be the most intuitive solution.

As for the covers, the Camera app doesn't show the recent photo on the cover, so if you see a photo on your home screen, it's Gallery.

ssahla ( 2015-05-22 23:48:50 +0300 )edit

You're right about the cover... It was just my confused imagination. I'll edit the opening post.

Okw ( 2015-05-23 00:03:21 +0300 )edit

But you do have a point here and you got me thinking, maybe the order should be changed in the Gallery app instead of Camera? So that when you tap on "Photos" you would be taken to the bottom of your photo grid, with the latest photo being last, and then left would be back in time and right would be forward, which would be natural (at least for us left-to-right writing folks). That might work.

ssahla ( 2015-05-23 00:09:55 +0300 )edit

I like that idea. So that new photos are appended to the end of the list instead of the beginning. This reflects the way traditional photo albums work; You don't shift every photo one step to the right when adding a new one.

Okw ( 2015-05-23 00:18:00 +0300 )edit

Edit your suggestion that way and you'll get my vote. :)

ssahla ( 2015-05-23 00:20:54 +0300 )edit