Can I sort on metadata?

Question

I just posted a message asking about filtering on metadata, but I didn't want to confuse that thread with this second question:
Can I sort on metadata? For example, can I sort on "Date Time Original"?
I know I can sort on "Date Created," but that's not the same thing as the metadata's "Date Time Original" field. E.g., I have jpg files where the "Date Time Original" is in 1990 but the Date Created is in 2012. Sorting on Date Created doesn't order the files chronologically based on when the photo was taken.
Thanks.

Answer 1

I have jpg files where the "Date Time Original" is in 1990 but the Date Created is in 2012. Sorting on Date Created doesn't order the files chronologically based on when the photo was taken.
To me it seems Date Time Original in Exif data from camera equals the Date Created from IPTC. This makes also some sense because exif is created using the Camera software and when you have set the date and time correctly this reflects the moment the file was created.
When using images that don't have its origin in a camera able to provide exif (analog camera or scanner etc.) you have to provide this data yourself and fill in the right places. I don't know if you were able to add this in the filed Date Time Created in an earlier version of PS file info using CS6 I can't find an editable field in the file info that is called 'Data Time Original', only date created is available.
Hence Bridge (although the options for filter and sort could be somewhat expanded) will not likely provide this option in future versions but you can always put a Feature Request for this, but if only 1 or a few people have the need for this it is not very likely to get realized I'm afraid.
So your only chance might be a script that reads your metadata and for example replaces the 'date created' data with the 'Date Time Original' data if this is in the metadata written.
You could try the dedicated Adobe Bridge Scripting Forum for this, their are some very helpful people in there:
http://forums.adobe.com/community/bridge/bridge_scripting
And make sure backing up the files before trying to alter them, if it screws things up you always have the originals to refer to.
Also a small tip that won't help you now but can do in the future. Think of a proper naming convention of your files and stick to it. Personal I rename all my files with first "YYYYMMDD" and then a short subject description followed by a sequence number for series of that same subject.
This will place your files always in a natural sort order for date. And when scanning pre digital files create a template for the metadata in Bridge with your common copyright info and use the IPTC core fields to immediately fill in the important fields like description, keywords, place and date created. You can select multiple files and use this template to ad the info in one go.