Disparity between "Finder" searching to find pictures, and using "Photos" searching to find pictures.

Apple Support Community:

I have an issue with my Mac.  My operating system is: macOS Big Sur

11.6.4. 

My question is regarding picture metadata on the Mac and how

the Mac uses that data.  My pictures are

stored in JPG format using the Mac file structure.  I am not storing them in Mac Photos. 

Let’s say I want to bring up all pictures that

mention “Provo Canyon, Utah”.  Finder

seems ideally suited for this, so I search using “Provo Canyon, Utah”.  I then get a list.  The pictures that match the search show up as

thumbnails, and that is pretty sweet! 

I might decide to use the “Get Info” option to see more

metadata about this picture, such as the date the picture was taken (see above

picture).  And here is where I run into

problems.  The “date taken” is wrong.   Perhaps

it is the date the folder was created, or maybe the last date that I worked on

the photo in Photoshop.  I’m not quite

sure, but it is NOT the date that the picture was taken.  If I wanted to search for this picture using

a date in Finder, I must use this “wrong” date or it won’t select the

picture.  It is as though the “date taken”

is not in the metadata.  And for some

reason, all pictures taken after about 2018, have the correct “date taken.”  No doubt, somewhere along the road, I did

something to cause this problem, but I now can’t figure out how to fix it. 

If I move these same set of pictures (with the weird dates) into

the “Photos” program on my Mac, highlight a random .jpg image, select image

from the top ribbon and then select “Adjust Date and Time,” I see the correct

“date taken” date.  Or If I use PhotoShop

to look at the MetaData, I also see this same correct information.  Nowhere in the PhotoShop MetaData do I find

that odd date and time (in this case: April 14, 2018 @ 8:46 PM).  (Created date on previous slide) 

So that brings me back to my problem.  Why the disparity between what I find in the

Finder’s “Get Info” versus the data found in Photos (and in PhotoShop)?  And more specifically, how can I fix this

problem so I can search and find what I expect to find in Finder? 

I hope I explained that okay.  It is like “Finder” uses some secret piece of

the JPG metadata for its creation date that I can’t see using any other

tool. 

Regards:  Stan W,

.  (a faithful Mac

user) 

[Personal Information Edited by Moderator]