How Photos Handles Time Zones when Importing Photos in Photos 5 on Catalina

The problem

Occasionally photos may be sorted in an unexpected way in Photos, when we sort them by the capture date. This can happen, if Photos assigned a wrong time zone to the capture time of the photos for some of the photos on import, because it did not read the time zone set in the camera correctly. Typically, the photos or videos taken with different cameras may be sorted hours apart, if we imported the photos at different locations or the clocks in the cameras have been set differently.

How to check the Time Zone for the capture Time

If photos are apparently sorted incorrectly by time, check the time zones for the photos, that are out of order. The Info panel does not show the time zones by default, just the time in hours and minutes and seconds, because it uses the "Medium" date format. But you can see the time zones of the capture dates at the bottom of the panel "Image > Adjust date and time".

Or change the System Preferences to use a different date format, including the time zone: How to display the Date and Time Zone in the Info in Photos in Catalina

Changing the date format will make it easier to compare the date and time of incorrectly sorted photos. This is a new feature in Photos 5.

But why are occasionally the wrong timezones assigned at import?

Photos is trying to infer the proper time zone, when you import photos, because the EXIF capture date does not include the time zone. In Photos 1 to Photos 4 it worked like this:

• If a photo has GPS (iPhone photos), Photos may interpret the capture date relative to the GPS time zone.
• If no GPS is present, Photos may use the time zone of the current system time, when you import the photos to Photos. So dates will be read differently, shifted by several hours, if you import photos at home or if you import them while being still in the time zone, where the photos have been taken.

It is much better in Photos 5 on Catalina. Photos 5 on Catalina is reading the correct time zone, if there is an exif tag "Offset Time Original" in addition to the "Date/Time Original" tag.

Otherwise we are getting the same behaviour as with Photos 1 to 4.

If I export edited versions from Photos 5 after adjusting the date and time, and then reimport the phot, the photo will be imported with the correct capture time. Photos 5 is setting the exif tag "Offset Time Original" on export. This makes the working with time zones a lot easier than before.

How to Correct the Time Zone in Photos

For the photos, that are not sorted correctly, adjust the timezone to the timezone of the other photos. You can do that by changing the menu at the bottom of "Image > Adjust date and time" to another "closest city". If you switch to a different time zone, the capture date may be shifted by photos. If that happens, change the hour back to the hour you are seeing in "Original Time".

For example: If your camera has been set to the local time of New Zealand, but you import the photos at home, and the closest city shown is your home town, change the closest city, but ensure that the two dates shown, Original and Adjusted, will remain the same:

This can be done for a batch of photos at once. If you have used more than one camera, you may want to split your photos into two smart albums - for example, one album for the photos taken with the iPhone and one photo for the photos taken with a DSRL camera. This way you can select easily a range of photos for just one camera to fix the time zone for all of them at once. See: How to organise the Photos by the Camera model using a Smart album

If you did not always have a good GPS signal reception, for example, if some photos have been taken inside a building, you may also create smart albums, that wills group Photos according to GPS assigned or not, because a poor GPS signal and missing location may cause the time zone to change.

How to keep track of the time zones the camera is set to

What can make this procedure sometimes difficult is, that it is hard to keep track of when we changed the time zones in the camera. We may not be noticing, when we are crossing a border, if it is not marked and may still be using the previous time zone while the GPS is already showing the new time zone. Or an iPhone may not be able to connect to a time server when crossing the border and change the clock too late. I am always taking a picture of my wrist watch, when I change the time in my camera, so I can compare the time on the clock face to the EXIF capture date of the photo of the clock face and have a reference of the current time zone offset. This is essential, if we take photos in different time zones on the same day, and import them together.

Another difficulty: For some cameras we may get different results for the time zones, depending on the method of import, whether we import directly from the camera or are using a card reader and the card is no longer in the camera. I am always using the card reader to avoid this complication.

The previous version of this user tip for Photos 1 to 4 is here: How Photos Handles Time Zones when Importing

This user tip was generated from the following discussion: Which date is used to sort photos?