Wrong Creation Date for The Photos Exported from Photos App

When you export your photos from Photos, you can use a subfolder preset and write the exported photos into subfolders named by the moments (the location and the date). All photos taken at the same day at the same location will be in the same subfolder. Then you can sort the folders by the name and get at least a partly chronological order of the photos. It makes it easier to keep the exported images organised. If the filenames are the original filenames created by the camera, the images in the folders will also be sorted chronologically, if you sort by the filenames.

My archive of exported photos is looking like this, for example:

To export photos into subfolders named like the Moment use:

I changed the preset for the long Date format in the System Preferences > Language & Region > Advanced > Dates, so the dates will be written in the format Year Month Day. This makes is easier to sort by the dates.

To build on that.

You can also see the two different dates in finder, as shown in the screenshot with finder in column view. This is from an image I exported from photos in july 2019 - so the file has been created and last modified then, but the content creation date is still showing 2011...

If you export the unmodified original - you'll normally get a file exactly as it was when imported, including the file creation date.

There are two kinds of metadata involved when you consider jpeg or other image file.

One is the file data. This is what the Finder shows. This tells you nothing about the contents of the file, just the File itself.

The problem with File metadata is that it can easily change as the file is moved from place to place or exported, e-mailed, uploaded etc.

Photographs have also got both Exif and IPTC metadata. The date and time that your camera snapped the Photograph is recorded in the Exif metadata. Regardless if what the file date says, this is the actual time recorded by the camera.

Photo applications like iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom, Picasa, Photoshop etc get their date and time from the Exif metadata.

When you export from iPhoto to the Finder new file is created containing your Photo (and its Exif). The File date is - quite accurately - reported as the date of Export.

However, the Photo Date doesn't change.

The problem is that the Finder doesn't work with Exif.

So, your photo has the correct date, and so does the file, but they are different things. To sort on the Photo date you'll need to use a photo app.

As I said:

To sort on the Photo date you'll need to use a photo app.

failing that there are a number of apps that will edit the date on the file to match the photo:

Graphic Converter,

A Better Finder Attributes

among others.