iPhone, iPad, iPod touch: Synced photos appear in wrong order

If your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch is using the latest software, it sorts photos by the Date Taken tag of the photos. Specifically, your device uses the pictures’ EXIF tags to determine the Date Taken information. Your device will look for the following EXIF tags within your pictures:

1. Capture Date
2. Date Time Digitized
3. Date Time Original
4. Last Modified

If you are using iPhoto for Mac OS X, your photos automatically sort on your device in the same order they are sorted in iPhoto or Aperture. Changes made to the sorting of your pictures in your iPhoto or Aperture albums and events will be reflected on the device after syncing.

If you are using Windows, or are not using iPhoto or Aperture on Mac OS X, you must change the Date Taken of photos to change their sorting on your device. Third-party photo-management software may be able to do this. Refer to the documentation of your photo-management software for more information.

In some cases, photos may not have a date in any of the above four EXIF tags, or photos may not support EXIF data (such as JPEG 2000, TIFF, PNG or GIF files). In this case, your device sorts these photos by the date the files themselves were created (as listed in the Date Created field in OS X Finder or Windows Explorer).