Saving pictures from Photos to hard drive with original date preserved?

Is it possible to upgrade your Mac to macOS 14 Sonoma?

Sonoma is the first system version, that will export photos and videos from Photos while preserving the capture date as the file creation date.

On Sonoma you could export all original image files and edited versions to folders on an external drive to have a backup copy with the file creation date equal to the capture date and with the original image numbers set by the camera as the filenames.if you can, wait until you have upgraded to Sonoma to make the reorganization of your library. New in Photos 9 on macOS 14 Sonoma: Exporting Photos or Videos from Photos is now saving them with the date taken as the creation date

It sounds like you are using iCloud Photos to synchronize the pictures on your phone and MacBook Pro, is that right? Then you can just copy your Library to an external drive for an Archive of the old pictures. Then, with your Mac you can erase whatever pictures you want from your active drive.

Does your Mac Photos>Settings>iCloud have "Download Originals" checked? If all that is correct, then all your pictures are there in the Mac's Library, and saving all your old pictures is easy.

(If "Download Originals" is not checked, then all your full sized pictures may not be in your Library, and then you need to switch to Plan B!) 

Plan A: With all the pictures safely on your Mac, close Photos, click on the Photos Library in the Pictures folder, and duplicate it (command-D). Name this new identical Library "Archive," or something. You can transfer the Archive library to an external disk, formatted in APFS, if space is a problem. See this:

            Move your Photos library to save space on your Mac - Apple Support

You're done with the Archive Library, except to look at the old pictures any time you want.

Now, go to the original Library, and double click it to open it in Photos. Make sure that, on the Mac in Photos>Settings>General, this original Library is your System Library. In this picture "Use as your System Library" is grayed out, because it already is the system library. Only the System Library can connect to iCloud.

Then make sure that iCloud and Download Originals are checked. Now you can safely delete (on your Mac or on the phone) any pictures you you don't want on you phone. Deleted pictures go to Recently Deleted for a month, so don't worry. But the delete will happen on your Mac, your phone, and iCloud. Those pictures will still be in the Archive Library, since it's not connected to iCloud. New pictures you take with the phone will appear in this original library. But the Archive Library will have all your old pictures.

Plan B--this is if you have checked "Optimize Storage" on your Mac's Photos iCloud settings. That means that the Mac may not have copied full sized images from iCloud. It doesn't really have all your pictures. The best thing to do in this case is, hold on, make a new empty Library.

To make a new Library for the Mac, close Photos, option click the Photos icon, and choose Create New from the Library dialog. 

A new, empty Library will open. Then, on the Mac in Photos>Settings>General, you must make this new, empty Library your System Library. Set "Download Originals," and connect it to iCloud.

Then wait. Wait some more, and eventually this new Library will fill with full sized images from iCloud. Now you can throw away the old original Library--it doesn't have full sized images, anyway. And now you have a lIbrary that has all your pictures -- It's just like at the beginning of Plan A. Depending on the size of your Library, you may have to wait a week or more, but the Library should tell you when it's finished syncing. It might say something like this

at the bottom of the Library view. Leave the MacBook plugged in and running as much as possible--overnight is good. Keep Photos in the background when you're not using it--Photos will slow downloads to keep from interrupting your work.

Now--you're ready to go to Plan A, and archive your old pictures. 

This could use a lot of storage space on a disk-- you end up with two Libraries. You may have to have the help of an external hard drive for some of the swapping.

#1: Your Library may have originals. "Optimize" means to dump the full-sized files when needed. But you can't count on it. I'd go for Plan B

#2: The reason I suggested starting a new Library and letting it populate from iCloud, is that when it's done, you can be sure that your Library has entirely compatible files, and there are no corruptions left. Some sneak in over the years. But it's good to keep the old one as a backup.

#3: Right click is like control-click. That is different from option-click. Try that.

#4: You do the waiting after you have the new, empty Library connected to iCloud.

#5: Many of us maintain more than one Library. I have Libraries for old family pictures, for my Nikon pictures, and so on. Then I copy the best ones to the "Favorites" System Library so they will show up on my iPad and iPhone. New "iPictures" from the iPad and iPhone get copied to an iPictures Library, and I leave only the best of those in the Favorites System Library where they are shared to all devices.

As léonie says, you can upgrade to Sonoma and export all your pictures as jpegs. You might want to do this stuff first, though. I don't use export to "save" pictures, but there's never anything wrong with having multiple backups.