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Level 1

58 points

Time Zone Upon Import

When importing into Aperture, do you always have to set the Time Zone settings properly?

The easiest of course is when you are shooting in your local time zone and the camera time is set properly to match that. However, let's say you are shooting in a different time zone and you have set the camera time to match the correct time in that time zone. When importing, do you have to tell Aperture the correct "Camera Time" and "Actual Time"?

So long as you are properly managing the camera's time, do you even have to mess with the time zone settings in Aperture? Will it just automatically know that you shot in MST?

The reason I ask is that I thought the time zone adjustments were for when you needed to make changes because you didn't set your camera clock and/or time zone properly. This feature lets you correct it after the fact. However, it seems as though you have to do it always. I live on the east coast. I shoot in California, have my camera's time settings set to properly reflect PST and the correct time in California. If I were to import the images, they show up in Aperture with an EST time. Now, it is the EST that would match the correct time in California, i.e. if I shot in California at 10:00 am, the images would show up in Aperture as 1:00 pm EST. This is the correct time, but I want it to say, 10:00 am PST, which is telling me when and where I shot those images. The only way to do this is to make sure that you choose, "Camera Time" = America/Los Angeles and "Actual Time" = America/Los Angeles. This seems ridiculous to have to do every time you shoot images in a different time zone than the one you live in.

On top of that, when I export the image masters for archiving purposes, the date is reflective of the EST, not the PST. What am I supposed to do, change the date and time of all the Masters of images that were shot with the correct time to begin with?

Can someone PLEASE shed some light on the TIME, TIME ZONE, CAMERA TIME, ACTUAL TIME and when to do/how to use these features properly when importing images. It seems like it should be straight forward, yet it continues to throw me for a loop.

Thanks

Message was edited by: macorin

Message was edited by: macorin

Macbook Pro 17", Mac OS X (10.6.4), 2.93 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4 GB 1067 MHz DDR3

Posted on Nov 7, 2010 7:08 AM

20 replies

Nov 9, 2010 3:39 PM in response to macorin

OK so if understand correctly the problem you're having is actually on export not on import.

It does seem that Aperture is doing some counterintuitive things with dates both in 'Adjust Date and Time' and on export.

From the playing around I've done it appears that Aperture is normalizing the time to the local time zone on export but only of the Subfolder Format section.

So for example if I have an image with the Date & time of 3/23/2010 23:44 PST AND the timezone of the my Mac is set to EST then when I export the image if I select a subfolder format of image year/month/day then the day subfolder is created as 24. However if the time zone of the MAc is set to PST then the day subfolder is created as 23.

Now all this seems to only affect the subfolder times. If I select image date/Time as the name of the image in Name Format it always appears with the correct image date and time. So in this example no matter the Time Zone of the Mac the image name was always 2010-03-23 23-44-21.jpg

This doesn't really help you directly but I guess its good to know you're not nuts (at least in this instance 🙂 )

As for Adjust Date and Time it to seems to normalizing for the time zone. Change the time zone of the Mac and the time in Adjust Date and Time changes also.

Not sure how this behavior compares to other image management software, I certainly wouldn't do it this way or at least I'd make it configurable, but perhaps for Pros that really travel around a lot it makes sense.

Hope this helps, somewhat.

macorin Author

Level 1

58 points

Nov 9, 2010 6:57 PM in response to Frank Caggiano

Frank,

You are spot on in your analysis. While true this doesn't help me directly, it at least let's me know that I'm not crazy, and that I wasn't doing anything wrong. I guess I just won't use the Image Day/Month/Year subfolder format when I export images. It is a shame to have options (and Aperture gives you plenty throughout the application), but to not be able to use them because they don't work correctly, nor universally. The only way that they would work correctly would be if you went through the steps of importing like we've outlined, and then exported the images from Aperture while you were still in the field (thus still in the time zone which you shot the images in). Of course, I guess you could also change the time zone settings in your preferences so that they don't update automatically, but that is silly.

I am going to avoid using that subfolder format for now. I may use image date (this being different than image month/day/year). For some reason, when you use image date as a whole, it places it into a subfolder with the correct date. When you export it with a subfolder format of image month/day/year, the day is off based on the time of day the image was shot. This type of thing seems like a bug. As far as I am concerned, if you import the image with certain time and date metadata, that information should be stored and be usable upon export.

As for the "Adjust Time and Date..." function, the only way to use it seems to be to use it before setting/correcting any time zone issues. If for some reason the time on your camera was off (not due to Time Zone, but rather off by minutes, etc...) you can correct the time using that function, and then correct the time zone using the batch change function afterwards. The "Adjust TIme and Date..." feature is really only for date issues and incremental changes to the time, not due to time zone inaccuracies.

Perhaps Apple designed this to work best for professionals in the field. I am anal, especially when it comes to information that is categorical and archival. I want it to be accurate. Maybe Apple needs to design this aspect of the app so that it works properly under all situations, not just those it perceives to be most useful to professionals. As you said, they should at least make this a configurable option.

Anyway, thanks for the input, and the time you've spent helping me to think this through. It was extremely helpful.

Mac

Message was edited by: macorin

macorin Author

Level 1

58 points

Nov 11, 2010 4:43 AM in response to guana

Guana,

It looks like this thread could be finished and I wanted to make sure you had a solution. I think your solution is on two fronts:

1) when you first import your images, you need to make sure you set the time zone settings correctly. Since you have been following this thread, you should have some idea of what I am talking about. First off, hopefully you are setting your camera time to PST. Even if you aren't though, you can correct that with the Time Zone settings during import. As has been discussed, you simply set the "Camera Time" and "Actual Time" to PST and your images will show up with the PST label that you are looking for. If you didn't set your camera time to PST, you set the "Camera Time" to EST and the "Actual Time" to PST and the adjustment will be made and the label of PST will show correctly.

2) as for the images you have already imported, the "Adjust Date and Time..." is the wrong place to make the adjustment you are looking for. This will adjust the date, and also the time by any increment you want, but will leave the time zone the same. You need to go to the "Batch Change" function. You want the batch change function anyway, because you are going to be changing multiple images. Click on all of the images you want to change, and then within the batch change function, you will select the adjust time zone feature. Now you can proceed to set the "Camera Time" and "Actual Time" just as you would have done at import.

Note: if the time of day or date is wrong because you simply weren't paying attention to the clock on your camera, I would first change that with the "Adjust Date and Time..." function, and then proceed to change the time zone with batch change.

I hope this helps, makes sense and is what you were looking for.

Mac

guana

Level 1

0 points

Nov 11, 2010 6:33 AM in response to macorin

Mac,

I appreciate you making sure I understood the solution to my problem. Your explanation solved the problem I've had with the time zones. Been making several mistakes, with the first mistake that I often forget to reset the local time when I get in the PST zone. I then adjusted the time (EST) I have set in the camera in Aperture using the "Adjust Time and Date". I followed your explanation and sure enough using the "Batch Change" solved the problem.

I initially thought my problem was the same as yours, but I can now see where I did not understand fully. Your reply made 100% sense and was exactly what I needed to understand. Thanks again for your help.

Nov 11, 2010 7:28 AM in response to macorin

Nice follow up. Also thanks for the heads-up on the time zone adjustment under batch change. Why adjusting the date and time is in one place and time zone is in another, sometimes Apple can make me so mad, argg .....

Anyway, hope this finally puts the issue to bed.
regards

Time Zone Upon Import