How to organize/sort images by EXIF image data

My favorite solution is to set the file date the same as the exif photo date. Doing this, you can sort the files using any file explorer tool.

1. Install jhead (apt-get install jhead)
2. Go to the photos directory and run this command jhead -ft *. This will set the file date in the filesystem with the create date of the exif metadata
3. Now just go to the top menu (in Ubuntu you most go with the mouse through the top of the monitor screen), select View → Sort Images → By Date.

I recommend using exiftool. You can install it with

sudo apt install exiftool

Here's a sample command that renames the files based on creation date in YYYYMMDD format and appends a sequence number at the end.

exiftool '-filename<CreateDate' -d %Y%m%d%%-.4nc.%%le -r

And here's a sample command that moves image.jpg into a directory with its creation date as its name, in the 'YYYY-MM-DD' format.

exiftool -d %Y-%m-%d "-directory<datetimeoriginal" image.jpg

There's more sample commands in the documentation: https://sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/filename.html