Photos date change problem - dates before 2000

For example when I tried to enter 1951 it gives me a date of 51 and wants to adjust the date by a thousand plus years.

You have to type very fast - enter the four digits of the year in quick succession without any hesitation. Then Photos will accept the date. It has been like this, since Photos came first out in April 2015.

You can even use dates for years in the far future or more than a thousand years ago. I am using this to keep photos sent to me by others separate from my own photos. I simply set the year back by 1000 years for photos taken by others. Then thy will not appear among my own photos, but I can still know the exact date.

Batch changing the date to the "file modified date" would require a complicated Apple Script. The Apple Script dictionary for Photos does not allow access to the file creation date or modification date of the original photo. We would have to export the original image file, write it to a folder, then read the dates and copy them back.

Adding dates before 2000 works for me without a problem:

Boot into Safe Mode, Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode, and try changing the date from there. Reboot normally and try again.

Next, as a test launch Photos with the Option key held down and create a new, test library. Import some photos and test to see if the same problem persists. Does it?

Finally, log into another user account on your Mac and test in a library there. Post the results.

Also do you have the iCloud Photo Library enabled in your library?

Thanks - is that easy to do ?

If you are an experienced Apple Script programmer, maybe. I would need a long time to write that script.

I assume, the photos you want to tag with dates are scanned photos?

I would collect all photos, that should have a similar date, e.g in 1951, in an album and arrange them in the order you want them to be.

If you can drag the photos into the correct order, adjust just the first photo in the album to the correct date and time in 1951, and then run this Apple Script: : Script: Batch Change the Date and Time to a Fixed Date

It will set all selected photos to the same date, but increment the time in steps of one minute between successive photos. This way, you will be able to sort them by date and time.

Hi OT..

From what I can gather you're the photo metadata guru.. 🙂
I'm moving to mac from PC and when I bring my photos to my mac it changes the creation date to the day I copied the flies across (ie today). So when they are displayed in Photos, they all display as today's photos. (creation date = today. modified date = when the photo was taken).
Is there a way to overwrite the creation date with the modified date - so the the photos app will correctly display these in date order? I guess I'm looking for a batch change the creation date to the modified date.... ?

Thanks a lot
Michael

Thank you !

These photos are originally stored on a PC..(the problem arises because i'm trying to bring a PC photo library to mac, and creating the files on the mac resets the creation date).
Perhaps to get around this issue I could upload them to iCloud for windows drive on my PC (as the PC has the correct metadata).. Would this be the sensible way to do it ? I might give that a try..?

Thanks - is that easy to do ?