Dating Historical Photos

When I try organise old family scans or other historical photos, I arrange them in an album according to an estimated date. For some photos, it is easy to find out the correct dates, for example weddings or family meetings at Christmas or other well defined events. For other photos I look at the clothes and hair style. It will give a rough idea of the year.

Usually we can tell the time of the year by looking at the vegetation, and if there are children in the picture it is easy to guess their age. The lighting will tell us the time of the day , morning, or noon, or night.

Once the photos are in a chronological, plausible sequence, I use the command "Image > Adjust Date and Time" to set the date of the photos where I know a date.

To set the dates of many photos at once to the same date and time, with a little increment between the times of successive photos, I am running an Apple Script,

see: Script: Batch Change the Date and Time to a Fixed Date

• To run this script select some photos, that have been taken at roughly the same time, and have been arranged in the chronological sequence you want. Set the date and time of the first photo of the sequence to the date and time your want, for example to Decenber 24, 1952 for a Christmas party. Then select all photos at once and run the script. The date of the first photo will be copied to all selected photos, with an increment of one minute between successive photos.
• Alternately use this script: Script: Lift and Stamp all Metadata from one Photo to All Other Selected Photos It is working in a similar way, but will also copy the titles and the assigned location, and the keywords to all selected photos.