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Exported Photo Creation Dates Wonky

Howdy!


I've been thumbing through some similar issues, but can't seem to find a thread that addresses this one specifically.


My iPhone photos are automatically synced to iCloud and then down to the Photos app on an MBP running Catalina.


Everything's nice and smooth. Except that when I export photos -- even using the "unmodified originals" option -- the creation date is wrong.


EXIF data is correct. The date and time the photo was captured is in there. But the creation date shown for an exported photo is neither when the photo was taken nor when it was exported. It's somewhere in between -- either when the photo is synced from the iPhone up to iCloud, or when the photo is synced down from iCloud to the MBP (I suspect the latter, but I'm not sure).


Driving me nuts, since I spend a lot of time shuffling through precise creation dates/times for photos in Finder (and Path Finder). Is there some way to get exported photos to display the true creation date?


Any assistance greatly appreciated!

Posted on Oct 29, 2019 11:11 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Oct 30, 2019 12:05 AM

Well the thing is the File creation date reflects the date the file was created. The Exif date reflects the date that the photogrpah was created. The key here is that the file and the photograph are not the same thing.


An app like this


https://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderAttributes/


will allow you to edit the creation date to match the Exif.


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2 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Oct 30, 2019 12:05 AM in response to Dmnkly

Well the thing is the File creation date reflects the date the file was created. The Exif date reflects the date that the photogrpah was created. The key here is that the file and the photograph are not the same thing.


An app like this


https://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderAttributes/


will allow you to edit the creation date to match the Exif.


Oct 30, 2019 1:45 AM in response to Dmnkly

The Photos.app on Catalina does no longer preserve the original file creation date at all. This is independent of iCloud Photos.

Previously, Photos would copy the original image file into the library package, exactly as it is. Exporting the unmodified original would create a file with the same creation date as the file we imported to Photos (unless iCloud syncing changed the dates). But now Photos is saving a copy with a new filename and extension (.jpg will be changed to .jpeg). When we export the original, Photos will recreate it from the saved, renamed file and that will result in changed file creation dates.

Inside the library package the originals are looking like this:


If you want to preserve original file creation dates, save backup copies of your originals, before you import them to Photos 5.0. Backing up the originals before importing them to Photos is a good practice anyway.


To get the file creation dates back you could use the application Raw Right Away. It installs two services "Apply World Time Stamp" "Apply Camera Timestamp". These will be available, when you ctrl-click an image in the Finder and lety you change the time stamp back.



Exported Photo Creation Dates Wonky

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