Photos

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Level 1

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Photos

How do I change the date on my Mac for photos dated in 2010 when the pictures weren't even taken until 2014? My photo stream on my phone doesn't show that date, but my Mac does. There are several hundred pictures so I'd like to do it all at once. I don't even know how to flag pictures. I've tried to figure that out. I did choose the 1st picture and was able to change the date & time and it did move to the 2014 section. I would like to do the other hundreds of pictures all at the same time if possible. Thank you.

iMac Pro, iOS 12.1

Posted on Nov 14, 2018 9:25 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Nov 14, 2018 11:32 AM in response to sophilu

After you select the photos use the menu item "Image" in the main menu bar. In the "Image" menu select "Adjust date & Time".

See this Help page: Add titles, descriptions, and more to photos using Photos on Mac - Apple Support

Change a photo’s date and time

You can change the date and time associated with a photo—for example, if you travel to another time zone, and your camera assigns dates and times that are correct for your home, but not the place you visited.

In the Photos app on your Mac, select the photos you want to change.

Choose Image > Adjust Date and Time.

Enter the date and time you want in the Adjusted field.

Click a time zone on the map and choose the closest city, if necessary.

Click Adjust.

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Answer 2

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Nov 14, 2018 9:33 AM in response to sophilu

I would like to do the other hundreds of pictures all at the same time if possible

If you select several photos at once and use the command "Adjust Date & Time", the date of all selected photos will be shifted by the same amount. So, if the first photo will be shifted from 2010 to 2014, the dates of all other photos will also be shifted by four years.

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Answer 3

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Nov 14, 2018 9:45 AM in response to sophilu

No problem. Here is a Help page on how to select photos:

https://support.apple.com/guide/photos/select-and-deselect-photos-in-photos-on-m ac-

pht40b0be510/4.0/mac/10.14

Basically, you can select a range of photos by selecting the first photo, the hold down the shifty while selecting the last photo of the range. All photos in between the two photos will also be selected.

If you want to select individual photos, that are not adjacent, hold down the ⌘ key while clicking the photos.

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Answer 4

sophilu Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 14, 2018 9:36 AM in response to léonie

I know this sounds stupid, but I've been trying to select more than one photo and I don't know how to do it. Obviously, I'm not a tech wizard. I'm just trying to organize photos. Can you tell me exactly what buttons to press to select? Thank you.

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Answer 5

sophilu Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 14, 2018 10:33 AM in response to léonie

Ok I was able to select them; however, now I don't know how to adjust the date & time. I saw your 1st reply about selecting command and then select "adjust date & time". I'm not sure where the "adjust date & time" is located.

Thank you for your help.

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Answer 6

sophilu Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 14, 2018 11:44 AM in response to léonie

Thank you so much! I don't have time now to try that but I will as soon as I can. I'll let you know if it worked given you've invested so much time helping me! I really appreciate it! Another thing that I find strange is on my iphone as well as on my Mac computer there are often doubles. I don't understand it. So I'm manually deleting one of them. I'm trying to do the same one on both in case I lose a picture. I always choose the picture on my Mac where the info screen doesn't include both a key word and description. I delete the one with only one of those (I think it's description only). I've tried to delete one in my phone to test if it will delete on the computer automatically but that doesn't work, at least how I've done it. I've backed up to the cloud first then checked. So I'm deleting them at the same time. With other 7,000 pictures this will take awhile. What I most care about it that I don't lose pictures I want. At the present moment I'm actually deleting many pictures so that I can clean up my photo stream. This is just the beginning of a major picture project where someday I need to scan physical pictures and get them into my computer in some organized way. I've waited a long time. The kids are all graduated from college and working so it's on my to-do list. I'm just starting with the iPhone pictures. It's just a really large project. At least I'm starting. Thanks for helping with this part. I'll get back to you when I can, unless you'd rather me leave you alone!

Have a great day!

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Answer 7

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Nov 14, 2018 11:52 AM in response to sophilu

As you are cleaning ups your photos en masse, I would make a backup copy of your Photos Library on an external drive. It is easy to make mistakes when deleting photos, and if you copied the Photos Library to an external drive, you will have a copy, where you can recover the photos you accidentally deleted.

I would not bother to delete photos from My Photo Stream. iCloud will delete them automatically after 30 days anyway. iCloud will keep at most 1000 photos in My Photo stream.

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Answer 8

sophilu Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 15, 2018 12:47 PM in response to léonie

Thank you leonie for your suggestion. I backed up my computer yesterday. I still need to do that date/time adjustment, but may I ask another question? I'm in the beginning of a huge picture project which involves eventually getting physical pictures on my computer and organizing them all. I wonder if you have a suggestion for labeling them, that is, the key word? I was using names, but I wonder if a date would be better, perhaps just a year. What I don't really know is later, after I've done all this organizing, in what way do we access pictures, either to just view or even make small albums for a purpose. So I know that the way I organize and label them is so important. I don't want to get too far into this and then realize I've done it all wrong. So do you have a system for labeling your pictures? Thanks!

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Answer 9

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Nov 15, 2018 12:47 PM in response to sophilu

Photos is doing a lot of labelling automatically. It will group the photos according to the dae and the place they have been taken into moment. it helps a lot, if you assign locations to your photos, if you know the places.

Then the moment will show you all photos taken at the same place at the same time. The collections will group related moments, for example photos taken while travelling during a vacation, and a year will show all collections from one year.

Furthermore, Photos will scan the library and classify the photos according to the scenes and objects detected in the photos. After the initial scan you can search for photos with dogs or cats, sunsets, beaches , birthday cakes, christmas trees and many more.

We need only add keywords, titles, descriptions for information, that photos cannot extract automatically, or where the automatic classification is wrong.

I write the categories, that are important to me into the keyword field, and a title for the event depicted in the photo. Put the information into the descriptions, that you will use to search for the photos.and put the information into the titles, that you want to be displayed below the thumbnails.

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Answer 10

sophilu Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 15, 2018 12:51 PM in response to léonie

Thank you so much for all your help! I just used your instructions to relabel a large group of pictures for the date. It seems I'll be able to use that same process to add titles or adjust keywords if I decide to do that. I can figure out titles, but I'm still a bit hazy on what kinds of keywords I will use. You say categories important to me, but I'm not sure exactly how to wrap my mind around that. Your explanations did help so much though. I'll be adding titles, but I'm not really sure how I'll come up with keywords that make sense. You've helped me so much! Thank you!

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Answer 11

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Nov 16, 2018 4:55 AM in response to sophilu

. I'll be adding titles, but I'm not really sure how I'll come up with keywords that make sense. You've helped me so much! Thank you!

Use the keywords only, if you frequently need to search for photos of a certain category. For example, I like to take pictures of lighthouses , of flowers, of birds, of fountains, so I am tagging the photos with the keywords "Lighthouse"; "Bird", etc.

IT is not compulsory to use keywords. If there are currently no obvious keywords you can think of, wait, until you have worked bit with your library.

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Answer 12

sophilu Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 17, 2018 6:01 AM in response to léonie

Thank you so much leonie! You really have gone above and beyond to help me with this project! I've been putting it off due to its overwhelming nature. Now I'm at least starting. Also, I was thinking about one thing you said earlier...that I don't need to delete photos in my photo stream. Does that mean in my phone? If this is true, and I do cloud backups regularly, if I delete photos in my Mac, they will eventually be deleted in my phone? Just so you know what prompted me to finally do this is I had a message on my phone that I was reaching capacity and it asked it I wanted to do something with them...I think it said minimize or something or put them in the cloud, I can't remember. I was concerned that it would be difficult for me to access them if I did that so I started working to delete pictures from my computer and phone at the same time to be sure it happened successfully. What I found was I had all those pictures dated in error from my son's wedding on my computer but not in my phone. I think my computer can handle the pictures so I'd rather not put them all in the cloud. But I really don't know how all that works. So, are you saying I don't really need to delete them from my phone if I delete them on my computer?

Thanks!

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Answer 13

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Nov 17, 2018 7:34 AM in response to sophilu

iCloud has two ways to transfer photos between your devices. Do not mix these methods. Pick one horse and ride it.

My Photo Stream
iCloud Photos (called" iCloud Photo Library" on older systems)

See: https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT205743

"My Photo Stream" is stream of photos that will automatically transfer new photos from your iPhone to your Mac and new photos from your Mac to the iPhone. It can hold up to 1000 photos. and it will purge automatically the older photos from this stream after 30 days. It will also remove the older photos from the stream, when it reaches the 1000 photos limit. If you just leave it alone, My Photo Stream will never have more than 1000 most recent photos. To free storage from your iPhone delete photos directly from the iPhone from the Moments. Deleting from My Photo Stream will not help much.
iCloud Photo Library is quite something else. It is a complete syncing service. It will keep the libraries on your Mac and iPhone identical. So you will always have the same number of photos on all devices, wit the same edits automatically applied. It can be problematic, if one of your devices does not have much free storage. Then you would need the optimize storage option and download the photos from iCloud whenever you want to see them.

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Answer 14

sophilu Author

Level 1

8 points

Nov 18, 2018 9:25 AM in response to léonie

I appreciate you sending this to me. I still don't really know what I have. I do pay an extra 2.99/mo for iCloud. Maybe that has to do with photos. It seems most of the pictures on my phone are the same as my computer although on my computer I know at least the wedding pics and probably some other pics that were not taken on my phone are not in my phone. But it seems whenever I take a picture on my phone, it appears on the computer. Does that give you any clue to what I have? I can't find "Moments" on my phone; just photos, for you, album. I also can't see the "info" that I've been adding to the photos on the computer. It's organized by dates. On my computer I can see the captions of photos, moments, collections, and years. I just want to understand if I need to delete photos from my phone as I delete them from the computer. I'm printing the things you send me. Thanks!

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Answer 15

léonie

Level 10

200,645 points

Nov 18, 2018 10:03 AM in response to sophilu

I have? I can't find "Moments" on my phone; just photos, for you, album.

The "Photos" on your iPhone (to the left of "For You") is showing the Years, Collections, Moments like your Mac, but without the the headlines for "Years, Collections, Moments". In the Photos view you can click a thumbnail in Year view to see a collection, and clicking a thumbnail in the collection will take you to the Moments. The left arrow in the upper left corner will take you back to the collections or years.

I also can't see the "info" that I've been adding to the photos on the computer. It's organized by dates.

That is a sad limitation of Photos on the iPhone or iPad. On the handheld devices we cannot see the titles, descriptions, keywords, that we add in Photos on a computer. But if you type a title into the search field, photos will usually find the photo with this title on the iPhone or iPad, even if it does not show it.

I know at least the wedding pics and probably some other pics that were not taken on my phone are not in my phone. But it seems whenever I take a picture on my phone, it appears on the computer.

Then you may have My Photo Stream enabled. This will send all new photos taken on the iPhone to all other devices, where My Photo Stream is enabled.

Have you looked at the settings on your iPhone?

Settings > your name > iCloud > Photos: Is "My Photo Stream" enabled or "iCloud Photos"?

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