How can I transfer photos from "iPhoto" to "Photos" without loosing "date created" info?

Question

How can I transfer photos from "iPhoto" to "Photos" without loosing "date created" info?

I just decided to transfer all remaining photos I still have in an old iPhoto Library to Photos. I was able to "rebuild" the library within the newest version of iPhoto (which still exists on my Mac), and then export all photos to a folder on a hard disk. However, when I then imported them into Photos, they all got a new "date created" of the exact moment when I imported them - all information about when they were shot was missing. Is there anything I can do to keep that information in Photos? The problem is that I cannot even sort photos in "Photos" - under the "sort" option in the "View" menu there is only one, greyed-out, option: "Keep Sorted by Oldest First" if I look at either "Photos" or the "Album" "All Photos" in the sidebar. Why are there no more options? (E.g., sort by title?) Why is "Photos" so clunky and unwieldy and counterintuitive? Why does it use the same generic name ("Photos") for the app, the actual thing it handles, and a link in the sidebar? Whatever happened to giving the Mac User an intuitive but customizable interface? Augggghhhh!

MacBook Pro with Retina display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), Magic Mouse

Posted on Jun 7, 2016 7:29 AM

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Answer 1

LarryHN

Level 10

106,142 points

Jun 7, 2016 5:28 PM in response to Sebastian Kuhn

TO migrate keeping everything you migrate the iPhoto library to Photos by dragging it to the Photos icon in the dock

If you export them you create new files with selected metadata although the photos date should remain in the EXIF/IPTC fields - for help in exporting from iPHoto see -- Exporting From iPhoto

If the metadata is not correct after the export it is user error - and if you migrate rather than export and import nothing will change - How Photos handles content and metadata from iPhoto and Aperture - Apple Support

As to sorting in Photos - all user albums can be sorted by date ascending or descending or by title - Photos view (Years/collections/moments) is always sorted by photo date with the oldest first and All Photos is always sorted by date added

LN

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Answer 2

Old Toad

Level 10

216,100 points

Jun 7, 2016 5:29 PM in response to Sebastian Kuhn

These user tips from Photos for Mac will help you in your transition from iPhoto to Photos:

Photos 1.5 vs iPhoto 9.6.1: Features and Capabilities

Moments in Photos are the New Events

External Editors in Photos Are Here

Notes on Migrating an iPhoto Library from iPhoto to Photos for Mac

Photo Editing Extensions for Photos for Mac

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Answer 3

Jun 7, 2016 5:36 PM in response to Old Toad

Thanks OT and LarryHN for your useful advice. Unfortunately, most of it wasn't applicable to my situation: I forgot to mention that I had already imported my most recent iPhoto Library into Photos, and was trying to import a second, older one. Apparently you cannot "merge" libraries - at least, when I tried LarryHN's advice:

>> TO migrate keeping everything you migrate the iPhoto library to Photos by dragging it to the Photos icon in the dock

I just got a frozen "Photos" and nothing happened.

I DID try (before my post) to export all photos from the old iPhoto library to my hard disc as JPEGs (max) and then from there into Photos. Although supposedly JPEG keeps metadata, this is when all the information disappeared - all photos were in "Photos", but looked like they were all created in one instant. I might have tried using the "original" option for export, but in the end, I came across another - albeit tedious - trick: I selected "Reveal Finder Location" after selecting all the photos I wanted to transfer in iPhoto (under File), and lo and behold - a few 100 finder windows opened (I suppose 1 folder for each "event"). Conveniently, all the files were already highlighted, so all I had to do is drag all the files in each of these windows onto the "Photos" window, and they were imported one after another. Took me a little while, but now everything is hunky-dory - the photos are in "Photos" and they all have their information (geotags, dates etc) intact.

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