How to automate changing the date and time on HEIC files

While you snap a image with a smartphone, tablet, or digicam, the date and time are encoded within the image’s EXIF (Exchangeable image file layout) metadata. It’s embedded in recount that it is going to also be aged later by any instrument that works with the image.

Alternatively, as readers will testify, it’s very straight forward to wind up with a mismatch between the time and date recorded in a image and what they uncover about for advent date within the Finder on a Mac. Photos for macOS appears to have made this worse in Catalina. Export a image from Photos in Mojave or earlier variations of macOS the exercise of File > Export > Export Unmodified Long-established, and Photos uses the the same timestamp that that that you just must inspect by capacity of Window > Recordsdata.

As an example, this image I took at Shakespeare’s Globe in London on July 10, 2018 exports precisely with that advent and modified date from my Mac working Mojave. On my Catalina Mac, the the same file linked to the the same iCloud Photos collection reveals up with a Finder created and modified timestamp of correct now.

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While Photos entails an system to regulate the timestamp on single pictures and movies or shift it for batches, that doesn’t abet on this field, the place the items are interior the Photos Library and likewise you must will must have them style precisely and be searchable by date precisely within the Finder.

A Greater Finder Attributes ($17.95) is what I’ve instantaneous previously, because it may perhaps perhaps perchance extract the EXIF timestamp and update the Finder attributes, including for batches of files.

That’s graceful when you’re the exercise of JPEG, CR2, NEF, ARF, RAF, SR2, CRW, PEF, and CIFF image formats, all of which the app can negate up. Alternatively it doesn’t enhance HEIC, Apple’s implementation of an industry-long-established high-effectivity compression layout launched a pair of years ago to take care of and video quality whereas packing in image data more tightly.

While you’ve switched to HEIC, as many of us have, GraphicConverter ($39.95) is the correct option. A image editor and Swiss Army knife for image formats that’s been in filled with life constructing for 28 years, it also provides two kinds of batch operations:

• The exercise of File > Browse, that that that you just must navigate to a folder of pictures, steal out some or all, after which Retain an eye fixed on-click on to steal Exif Metadata > Get of living Advent and Modification Date Looking out on Exif. This updates the Finder timestamps. (It also provides varied suggestions).

• That you shall be in a local to also exercise GraphicConverter’s unparalleled batch-processing feature that capacity that you just can stack up operations by capacity of Convert & Adjust. This selection requires careful watch of the handbook, nonetheless abet you construct a worn activity that that that you just must then apply to chose folders, including subfolders. Once mastered, it provides you access to unparalleled multi-step characterize-processing in traditional, so it’s price discovering out when that that you just must need capacity future wants.

While you correct must salvage the sort of swap in bulk once, each A Greater Finder Attributes and GraphicConvert offer free trials. But I derive myself reaching for each utilities over and all over any other time.

This Mac 911 article is fixed with a request submitted by Macworld reader David.

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