I have changed the dates of photos in an event, but the event is still showing the original dates.

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Level 1

4 points

I have changed the dates of photos in an event, but the event is still showing the original dates.

I have a batch of old photographs that I have recently scanned and imported into iPhoto 11. In iPhoto I changed the dates to the dates when the original photos were taken (between 1971 and 1976) using the "Adjust Date and Time" and "Batch Change" menu options. This works fine as each photo now shows the date on which it was taken rather than the scan date which appeared when the photos were imported. However, the event itself still shows the scan dates so it does not appear in the right place when sorting by date. I'm finding this most perplexing because I have many scans of old photos (one goes back to 1900) and have been able to change dates of individual photos and the event has followed suit. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

iPhoto '11, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Photos scanned using Nikon Scan 4.

Posted on Jul 4, 2011 4:34 AM

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Answer 1

Hillingdale Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 4, 2011 4:46 AM in response to Hillingdale

Within minutes of posting this question I fixed the problem. It's just a matter of holding down the Option and Apple keys while launching iPhoto and then repairing the library database from the list of options that pops up on the screen. Easy really. Just took me two days to work it out.

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Answer 2

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Jul 4, 2011 5:04 AM in response to Hillingdale

Good work!! If necessary when not using iPhoto or for other files: there is a very handy tool to set a lot of the data on files: "A better finder attributes" which I use often, because the changes in my Photo Apps sometimes are not read correctly when they were changed in another App.

(iPhoto, Aperture, Adobe Lightroom)

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

162,396 points

Jul 4, 2011 5:04 AM in response to Lexiepex

iPhoto gets the dates and times from the Exif metadata of the photos. These are not Finder attributes, the Finder is quite unaware of this metadata. So I would be very cautious using a utility for changing file metadata on photos and their metadata.

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Answer 4

Lexiepex

Level 6

14,102 points

Jul 4, 2011 5:36 AM in response to Yer_Man

Hi Terence you are quite right, but still, I did have these problems from time to time and yes "A better finder Atributes" changes these metadata. But you are right: no warning is superfluous. Lex

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