Transfer/copy iCloud shared album photos to an external hard drive via my MacBook Pro?

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 of what the file date says, this is the actual time recorded by the camera.

Photo applications like Photos, CaptureOne, Lightroom, Mylio, Photoshop etc get their date and time from the Exif metadata.

When you export from Photos 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.

There are apps that will edit the file data to match the Exif. This is one:

https://www.publicspace.net/ABetterFinderAttributes/index.html

When a photo is added to a Shared album all of the metadata is stripped from it for privacy reasons. So when you down load it that's what you'll get, just the file metadata and non of the EXIF or IPTC metadata..

Nicholas2409 wrote:

That makes sense, but even when I try to download / copy from my own photos

Download from where? If you're using the Finder to see the metadata you're only going to view the file's metadata and not the image's metadata. For that you have to view the photo with Preview and use the Info pane to see the EXIF and ITPC metadata.