In Photos on Mac, can't I assign location and adjust date together?

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Level 2

168 points

In Photos on Mac, can't I assign location and adjust date together?

I'm digitizing hundreds of print photos with the help of a scanner which saves them as .JPG on my Mac. But afterwards I naturally need to add location and date/time. To do that, I often select multiple photos, then click the Image menu and choose Adjust Date and Time. In that window, I adjust date and time for those selected photos. I then click Adjust which takes me out of that window. I then go back in to thew Image menu and this time I choose Location, hoping to add a location for both of them there. However, I see that Assign Location is greyed out. Not sure why.

I know I can add location by clicking the Info button at the top and then Assign a Location.

It seems I have to go to one place to change Date, and then a different place to assign a Location. Isn't there a way to do them both from the same menu or window?

iMac 24″, macOS 14.4

Posted on Apr 29, 2024 2:14 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

léonie

Level 10

195,151 points

Apr 30, 2024 11:22 AM in response to rick7

I am using an Apple Script to copy and paste the location and the date and time to a batch of scanned photos that are needing the same metadata. See: Script: Lift and Stamp all Metadata from one Photo to All Other Selected Photos

To use this script I collect all photos that need the same metadata in an album. This albums should be at the top level of My albums, not inside a folder. I arrange the photos in the sequence they should have when sorted by the date.

Then I adjust the date and time and the location of the first photo in the album and then use ⌘A to select all at once together and run the script (open the script in Sc riot editor and click "run"). It will copy the location from the first first photo to all other photos, and copy the date and time to the other photos, but it will add a small increment in time between successive photos, so we can sort the photos by the date. It will also copy the keywords and titles and captions.

If you just want to batch change the date and time, you could use this version of the script: Script: Batch Change the Date and Time to a Fixed Date

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Answer 2

Apr 29, 2024 10:18 PM in response to rick7

I use GraphicConverter 12 to edit all metadata before importing to Photos. You can edit dates, locations, descriptions, keywords, filenames etc in a batch for selected images and movies. See also:

Movie dates and Photos.app - Apple Community

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Answer 3

rick7 Author

Level 2

168 points

Apr 29, 2024 4:03 PM in response to rick7

UPDATE: I see the problem. If only a single photo is selected, you can double-click on the date at the top of the Info window to adjust the date. But you can't do that if multiple photos are selected. Not sure if that's an appropriate decision on the part of the programmers, as you can do that in the exact same window even if multiple photos are selected if you get there from the Image menu > Adjust Date and Time.

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Answer 4

rick7 Author

Level 2

168 points

Apr 30, 2024 1:06 PM in response to léonie

Thanks, léonie--this sounds excellent and I'll take a look. Nice touch that it slightly increments the time in successive photos.

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Answer 5

rick7 Author

Level 2

168 points

Apr 30, 2024 1:08 PM in response to Matti Haveri

Thanks for the detailed description in that other thread, Matti. And GraphicConverter looks like what I need.

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