Better sort function for photos in album/gallery

You can set orderby and order option to [gallery] shortcode like:

// Sort by post title(=file name), in ascending order
[gallery orderby="title" order="ASC"]

For other options you can use, see get_post‘s $orderby parameter section([gallery] internally calls this function).

Yeah, I tried the orderby property but when you click on a thumbnail to view the photo the order is not the same as in the “album view” – you can’t really use the previous/next thumbnail links.

There is a plugin I wrote before. This changes the prev/next link to the same order as album view.
Still need some more work to make this better but you can give a try if you like:

<?php
/*
Plugin Name: Image sort
Plugin URI:
Description: Fix prev/next image order as set in [gallery]
Author: yoshi
Version: 0.1
Author URI:
*/

function imgsort_previous_image_link() {
  imgsort_adjacent_image_link(true);
}

function imgsort_next_image_link() {
  imgsort_adjacent_image_link(false);
}

function imgsort_adjacent_image_link($prev = true) {
  global $post;

  global $imgsort_order, $imgsort_orderby;

  if ($imgsort_orderby == '' && isset($_GET['imgsort_orderby'])) {
    $imgsort_orderby = sanitize_sql_orderby( $_GET['imgsort_orderby'] );
  }

  if ($imgsort_order == '' && isset($_GET['imgsort_order'])) {
    $imgsort_order = sanitize_sql_orderby( $_GET['imgsort_order'] );
  }

  $orderby = $imgsort_orderby ? $imgsort_orderby : 'menu_order ID';
  $order = $imgsort_order ? $imgsort_order : 'ASC';

  $post = get_post($post);
  $attachments = array_values(get_children( array('post_parent' => $post->post_parent, 'post_status' => 'inherit', 'post_type' => 'attachment', 'post_mime_type' => 'image', 'order' => $order, 'orderby' => $orderby) ));

  foreach ( $attachments as $k => $attachment )
    if ( $attachment->ID == $post->ID )
      break;

  $k = $prev ? $k - 1 : $k + 1;

  if ( isset($attachments[$k]) )
    echo wp_get_attachment_link($attachments[$k]->ID, 'thumbnail', true);
}

add_filter('attachment_link', 'imgsort_attachment_link', 10, 2);

function imgsort_attachment_link ($link, $id) {

  global $imgsort_order, $imgsort_orderby;

  if ($imgsort_order)
    $link .= (strpos($link, '?') ? '&' : '?') . "imgsort_order=$imgsort_order";
  if ($imgsort_orderby)
    $link .= (strpos($link, '?') ? '&' : '?') . "imgsort_orderby=$imgsort_orderby";

  return $link;
}

add_filter('post_gallery', 'imgsort_gallery_set_order', 10, 2);

function imgsort_gallery_set_order ($content, $attr) {
  global $imgsort_order, $imgsort_orderby;

  if ( isset( $attr['orderby'] ) )
    $imgsort_orderby = sanitize_sql_orderby( $attr['orderby'] );
  if ( isset( $attr['order'] ) )
    $imgsort_order = sanitize_sql_order( $attr['order'] );

  return;
}

After activating this, you need to edit your image.php template and replace <?php previous_image_link() ?> with <?php imgsort_previous_image_link() ?>, and <?php next_image_link() ?> with <?php imgsort_next_image_link() ?>.

is this still an issue with the stable wp 2.7 version?