Comments on: Date-shifting in iPhoto ‘08

By: Hans Douma

Hans Douma — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:58:36 +0000

Did somebody ever try to change the date to a very early date, say 1-1-1890 ? I need to do this often because I have old documents scanned into iPhoto and I want them to have the date they were created. iPhoto cannot handle this. You will have to adjust the date twice. The first time it will end up with a date in 1941 and only after the second attempt it will use the proper date. Apple don’t react to bug reports on this issue

By: Darren

Darren — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:06:17 +0000

Thanks for the information, however, when I subtract 5 hours from the time for example, and this results in the photo being from the previous day, it doesn’t change the date automatically. Any thoughts? Thanks.

By: Chris

Chris — Sun, 17 May 2009 02:00:28 +0000

Just wanted to say thanks for this. I was looking around and found the batch change when I really wanted Adjust Date but just hadn’t found it. Thanks for the info.

By: Ebo

Ebo — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:53:06 +0000

Hey Max, the two functions do different things.

Batch Change will discard the date and time from each photo, and relabel them, starting out at the date&time you enter, adding the increment for next photo. Without regards to what the time between photos originally was.

Adjust Date will just shift the actual time on each photo. So their relative dates and times stay what they were. Typical use would be when your camera’s clock is a couple minutes off, compared to someone else’s camera, who’s pictures you are hoping to merge into your library. Or when you forgot to set the timezone.

Hope that makes sense.

By: Max

Max — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 04:43:01 +0000

I recommend using the “Batch Change…” => Date dialog instead. It does the same thing, but adds the option to add an increment of time between each photo. Ex: if you have a dozen photos with the wrong time, but they’re in order, you can use Batch change to mark them as “1:01pm, 1:02pm, 1:03pm, etc …”

I’m not sure why there are two options that do the same thing. Maybe it’s historical; I didn’t look too hard at the version before iPhoto ‘08.