Keeping original date of the photos when exporting

Hi

You need to distinguish between the file metadata (information about the file) and the image metadata (information about the image in the file)

If you copy a file the copies creation date will normally be set to the date the file was copied. The image metadata inside the file (which you can view in preview with the inspector window, iptc tab) will show the image capture date.

Summary:

The File metadata is kept in the file system, and represents when that copy of the file is created or modified

The image metadata is kept inside the file, as exif and IPTC data. This won't change when you copy / move the file.

(Depending on your system version, if you export unmodified original from photos, you will usually get a file with the same creation date as the image)


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...

However, finder (which is a file manager) can only sort by file dates, not by the photo metadata. You need a photo app for that.

Is the system version given below your question still valid? "MacBook Air 13″, macOS 10.13"? You just wrote "I'm running OS 10.1." This cannot be correct, if you are using Photos for Mac, as the Photos.app has first been released with OS X 10.10.3 Yosemite.

Did you recently enable iCloud Photos on your Mac? If the originals of your photos and videos are stored in iCloud, even exporting the original may not preserve the original file creation date, as the files need to be downloaded from icloud and create a new file.

Yes, preview app - tools - inspector. Then you can see the exif and IPTC tabs in there.

In finder - if you click on the file in column view you can see the dates in my screenshot (however I believe this only works on drives that have been indexed by spotlight)

Regarding the possible impact of iCloud on file creation dates, see the comment from Leonie above this.

Bottom line - you cannot rely on file dates to tell you anything about when the photo was taken - that is not what they are for. You need to look at the metadata *in* the file.

If iCloud Photos is enabled, the original file creation date is in jeopardy.

Enabling iCloud Photos will upload the original files into iCloud and merge them with the files already in iCloud. If there are duplicate files (some images may already have been uploaded earlier from other devices) the duplicate detection will solve the conflict between the duplicates and keep only one of the identical originals. This way the date of the original may change, when Photos suddenly downloads the preferred duplicate from iCloud.

Also, if you are using "Optimise Mac Storage" for iCloud, or if this feature has been enabled for some some time previously, original files may have been removed from the Mac and downloaded again. The file creation dates of these files, hat previously have gor optimised may be changed to he date, when Photos downloaded them again.

If you export unmodified original, then depending on the version of MacOS, you may get the date of the file as it was originally added to photos - which *might* be the same as the image capture date.