exif dates are wrong...

(1) I just moved over a 1,000 files into one folder so I can just import from one location into Aperture.

Did you really move? Even dragging to an external drive will not move the exising file but create a new copy on the drive. This new copy will have a different "Date Created" and "Date Modified" for the copied image file in the Finder, but the "Exif" tags "Date Time Digitized" and "Date Time Original" are not modified by Aperture. And Aperture will use the "Exif" date when sorting by date.

Here's the problem... Apparently, when I moved the files in Step (1) to one location, the exif date changed to today's date. So, when I imported the files using Aperture, it sorted the pictures according to today's date.

Aperture never changes the "Exif" date, unless you force it to by using "Adjust Date and Time".

Only there is one slight complication" If will depend on the time zone where the image has been taken, how the Exif will be interpreted. Aperture's default is to use the current system time zone when importing, if you do not specify the camera time zone. If your image has been taken in a timezone GMT-10 and you import it with Aperture's defaults in Germany, GMT+1, Aperture will interpret the Exif date in the timezone GMT+1, 11 hours off, unless you set the time zone parameters "Camera Time" and "Actual Time".

How are you displaying the Date and Time in Aperture in the Metadata view?

I am seeing the following dates and times in my custom "Times" metadata preset.

• The "Import Session" - the date I imported the image.
• The "Exif > Date" tag, set to the "Actual Timezone" of the location
• The "IPTC > Image Date Created"
• The "Legacy > Digital Creation Date"

IPTC and Exif are displayed correctly, even after moving the images around. If your images have the Exif tag set, moving and copying should not change this. The "Legacy > Digital Creation Date" is currently a mess in my main Aperture library and will always show today, for all images I ever imported. But that may be a bug on my system. What are the metadata tags that you are looking at, when you are checking the dates of the imported images?

I am combining multiple photo libraries from a variety of sources into Aperture 3.5.1 on OS X Mavericks. All of the files are located on an external hard drive.

The safest way to get the dates correct when importing from older photo libraries would be to merge them into your current library as a library, and not as exported files (see: Aperture 3.3: How to use Aperture to merge iPhoto libraries. ). That would save all previous edits and metadata tacking, and would avoid complications with wrong dates.

You might want first to combine the libraries to be imported, weed out duplicates, and then to merge the combined library into your current library.

It looks like Aperture were using the "last modified date" of your file and not the Exif date set by the camera. Please check, if your images do have an Exif date tag.

You can see the Exif, when you open your jpegs in Preview.

In Preview, use the "Tools" menu to reveal the Inpector.

The Inspector has tabs to show the IPTC ond Exif tags of the image.

And look at all date tags that you can find:

Do the original images you imported have those tags?

How did you create the images? Are those scans? Your screenshot does not show any camera generated data at all.

It is difficult to make the "Date created" the "Date tag". You would have to manually batch change the images or write an Apple script.

If the dates are o.k. in the original libraries, where you exported the images from, export them again and be careful to include the exif information, or better, import the original libraries as library, and not the single files.

Many of my dates in Aperture are totally wrong and show a 1974 date that won't change. It's kind of funny to see a D3 with a 1974 date but as far as I can tell Aperture totally messed up my dates from several shoots. I don't know what happened, been on the phone with the Aperture folks who tell me I can change that date, but I've tried and it won't change. They talk about capture date vs. digitized date which I can't figure why that would have that option on a digital file that didn't come from a scanner. So about 10% of my dates show the 1974 date and I can't fix them. I've even gone back to the original raw files and reloaded them, but that didn't work either. I can't be the only one with this problem.

Hi William,

I am having the same issue, but since this thread is about another problem, maybe start a new thread?

I'd be very interested to hear if you found any resolution to your issue. I'm getting 'date created' and 'reference dates' set as 1974, when importing from an iPhone 5 in Aperture, which is a relatively new device. Digital creation is correct, so I just unselect DC and RD when importing.

A.