changing date and time in get info/file info on mac

When you change the date in the photos app, the new date is stored in the database. Not the file because the file is always kept unchnaged.

So that you CAN export the file unmodified. If it changed the date, that would be modified.

If you want to export with the changed date you need to export normal (not unmodified original).

Hi

OK - dates in photos. Photos doesn't use the file creation or modified date at all. It uses the photo captured date in the exif data *within* the file.

And the way it is displayed: When you are seeing a range of dates, it is showing the range for all the thumbnails currently visible in the browser. A couple of examples:

All photos shown on screen are from one date:

Photos shown on screen cover a range of dates:

If you want to see the date for a single photo, select it and open the info pane (CMD-i). Or open it enlarged and the date of that photo is shown at the top of the screen.

Now, given that photos doesn't use the file creation or modified dates, do you still need to change those? If so, what do you need to change them to?

You still seem to be mixing up file dates with the exif metadata that describes the image inside the file.

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.

You seem fluent using the Terminal so you could use exiftool to set and copy metadata date tags:

Set DateTimeOriginal (most important), CreateDate, ModifyDate, FileCreateDate and FileModifyDate to any arbitrary timestamp:

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place '-AllDates=2015:01:01 08:00:00' '-FileCreateDate=2015:01:01 08:00:00' '-FileModifyDate=2015:01:01 08:00:00' image.jpg

I prefer to rename all images and movies as YYYY-MMDD-hhmm-ss.jpg. That makes it easy to copy that date to all metadata date tags and vice versa.

Rename files to datestamp (Filename looks like 2014-0101-1200-00.jpg and will append _NUM if DateTimeOriginal is the same for multiple files:

exiftool -fileOrder FileName '-FileName<DateTimeOriginal' -d '%Y-%m%d-%H%M-%S%%lc.%%e' .

Show all metadata date tags:

exiftool -a -G1 -s -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -time:all -api RequestAll=2 .

Movie dates need their own adjustments.

https://exiftool.org

3rd party tools like GraphicConverter can do all those basic metadata date manipulations via GUI. exiftool is only needed for more esoteric tasks.

> I tried exiftool “createdate”<file name but it doesn’t do anything.

Mac and Linux Terminal needs single quotes and the metadata tags must be carefully detailed because there are many overlapping similar tags. There is some learning curve but once you get it it is very powerful.

"touch" command modifies only the not-so-important and very fragile file dates, NOT the most important ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal.

I recommend using a workflow that sets DateTimeOriginal correct (*) and maybe also include the same date in the filename. Then you can quite easily copy it to other metadata like those more fragile file dates, if necessary.

(*) Photos.app always stores the original DateTimeOriginal (if it exists). Photos.app saves modified date to its internal database but you can export that modification via a "regular" .jpg export (or more clumsily by exporting it to a .xmp "sidecar" file with the original .jpg and then joining them with 3rd party tools).