Apple Photos not using the date taken

What is the file format of the image files? And your system version?

Photos 5 has a problem with the metadata of scanned photos. When I import or expand photos taken with a digital camera, the capture date date EXIF tags are handled correctly by Photos, but when I import or export scanned photos, the capture date tags are ignored. Does your Mac have Catalina installed? Are the photos scans or have they been taken with a digital camera and have camera exif tags? See: Problem in Photos 5.0: The adjusted date is not correctly embedded in the EXIF when exporting from Photos - Apple Community

Independently of this bug (or inconvenient new feature) , the dates you are seeing in Photos are depending on the view where you are viewing the photos. The "All Photos" album are showing the capture date at the top of the album, the "Recents" and "Import" are showing the Import" day and are sorting the photos by the import session.

To see EXIF data from within the Photos app, click on the " i " button in the toolbar to open the Info pane.

Different pre-loaded albums sort differently. For example, the (All) Photos album sorts by Oldest Capture Date. Others sort by Date Added. Most do not have any options for sorting, but albums you create do: select View > Sort > choose one of the three options: title, oldest, newest.

Hi depen12345,

Thanks for reaching out here in the Apple Support Communities. I understand that you have some questions about metadata on the files you see in Photos.

I'm glad to help with this.

I recommend reaching out to the Photos team at Apple Support for expert help with this question.

Apple - Get Support 

Take Care.

How have the photos been created? Taken with a camera or are they scans?

As I said, Photos 5 may ignore the EXIF capture date and use the file creation date instead, if the photo is a scanned photo and there are no tags for the camera model and camera make.

So, what kind of image files are these?

What does the Info pane in Photos indicated for that image?

Sometimes for some obscure reason .jpgs exported from Lightroom and imported to Photos have incorrect date/time eventhough the EXIF date seems to be correct. Sometimes also Google Photos have similar errors with EXIF dates/times.

I have a habit to check and babysit such files and, if necessary, use Graphic Converter to rebuild the metadata which usually helps. Graphic Converter also has a "Copy EXIF dates to all other metadata fields" command which might help if some app grabs the date from an incorrect field when it for some reason can't read the EXIF date.

Sometimes I have used brute force and with Graphic Converter made a duplicate, then zapped all metadata, and the copied relevant metadata (locations, caption, keywords, ratings) back to the zapped file.