Image Transfer Application: dealing with the change of File Date Creation?

When Apple's Image Capture application on macOS detects a connected iOS device, it will transfer those device images to the Mac using the EXIF DateTimeOriginal time stamp of the image for its Finder viewed creation and modification date. Any other tool performing this transfer may let the Finder ask the operating system to use the current hardware date/time for the creation/modification dates.

You are correct that the Finder lacks a sorting feature on the internal image DTO field. I would look into the third-party, free ExifTool which can help with sorting and displaying DTO information. The ExifTool site has a .dmg package installer for macOS that wants to install the application into /usr/local/bin, and you would need to adjust your PATH environment variable as ExifTool is run from the Terminal.

Never perform any ExifTool commands that you find on the Internet on files you do not want to change, and when you do, always test on a directory of duplicate images so you can measure the result without potential catastrophe.

I just tested this print-only example of sorting images by their DateTimeOriginal field on macOS 11.3.1. In this case, I am one level in the Terminal above the directory (TestImg) whose images that I want to process:

exiftool -p '$datetimeoriginal,$filename' 2>/dev/null ./TestImg | sort -t, -k1,19 -n | column -s, -t

This resulted in the following output to the Terminal:

The

2>/dev/null

throws away the total directories read and image files read output that would ordinarily appear, and in this case, mess up the sort. The ExifTool output is separated by a comma into two columns and that result is passed via a pipe '|' to the UNIX sort utility to break fields by comma and then sort column 1's date, which is 19 characters wide as a numeric (-n) sort:

| sort -t, -k1,19 -n

and then the output of the UNIX sort is again piped into the UNIX column command that bases its column output on the comma and automatically makes as many columns as represented by the comma delimiter

| column -s, -t

Image Transfer? Or Image Capture?

Image Capture is the application Apple includes with all systems.

Which are you using?

Hey Viking, this sounds like a great thing to document in a user tip.

I only use ExifTool as it is extremely powerful and free. A Google search will point you in the direction of using it to sort files based on their DateTimeOriginal stamp.

You are welcome.