How to adjust time by a fixed amount on on a bunch of photos in iPhoto?

[Winston]

When we were in India last summer I forgot to adjust the time on my camera. So all the photos are off by a fixed amount of time, about 9h36m (the camera was off by a few minutes for U.S. time too).

This causes some photos to appear to be a day off as well. For example, iPhoto has a photo with a date and time stamp of July 15 at 8:38 pm, which was actually taken July 16 at 6:14 am.

I've now got the photos in iPhoto, and have sorted them into Events. Is there an easy way to adjust all the photos forward by 9h36m, and have the date altered when this rolls it over to the next day? I'd prefer to fix this without having to move the photos out of iPhoto. I had to erase the original SD cards for re-use, but did make backups of them to an external drive.

The iPhoto Batch Change option appears to only allow giving all selected photos the same date and time, although you can add a one-minute increment between photos. I've also read that it can mess up other EXIF data. I only want to adjust the time by the fixed increment.

Given how easy it is to have the wrong time set on a camera, I'm surprised that Apple hasn't included an "adjust forward by x time" or "adjust backward by x time" option.


Thanks.

- Winston

[Article Accelerator]

Select the photos and go to Batch Change under the Photos menu.

[Winston]

Article Accelerator wrote:
Select the photos and go to Batch Change under the Photos menu.

The problem is that you can only select a single date and time for all the photos in the batch. There is an option to add a one-minute increment between photos, but that doesn't set the photos to the actual time taken.

I want to preserve the existing time differentials between photos - not just get the date right. The Batch Change option cannot just add an increment to each photo.

I've got something like 4000 photos from the trip, so changing them individually isn't practical.


- W

[voodoopenguin]

Winston wrote:
The problem is that you can only select a single date and time for all the photos in the batch.

Are you sure? When I select a group it says the time shown below is for the first photo. Adjust it for the correct time and all photos will be time shifted accordingly.

Paul

[Winston]

This is what the popup for Batch Change looks like for me:

[Winston]

I tried it by duplicating three photos and putting the correct date and time in for the first one, and not checking the "add one minute between photos" box. All three photos got the exact same date and time.

Not what I want.

Note that this is iPhotos, not Photos.

Edit: It looks like Photos allows you to do what I want, but I don't see a way to do it in iPhoto.


- W

[voodoopenguin]

Sorry, I was in Photos and assumed (wrongly) the actions would be the same.

Paul

[Winston]

OK, I was looking at the Batch Change option. Since I want to do a batch change.

There are two ways to adjust date and time. "Batch Change", and "Adjust Date and Time". It looks like "Adjust Date and Time" can actually do the batch change that I want. Will have to try a test version and see if it rolls over the date. It should, if it works correctly. Also want to test if it can do an Event or group of Events without having to check each photo separately.


- W

[Winston]

ps: iPhoto does have the "Adjust Date and Time" option. But Photos does not have the "Batch Change" option. (I use Photos only for my iPhone pictures.)

[Winston]

Looks like batch change via "Adjust Date and Time" works. Even works on an Event, although I found that it didn't work properly on the event where I'd created duplicates, changed the time on those, then trashed them. I had to select the original photos manually there.

Do wish I could enter the time differential instead of having to calculate the correct time for the first photo. At least the popup tells you what difference will be added, so I can check my calculation.


Thanks for the help.

- Winston