I recently had numerous old slides scanned by Scan Cafe and now want to import them into Aperture.
The slides have the following dates associated with them:
file creation date: 12/31/1903 (i.e. -0-)
file modification date: 12/6/2010
jpeg EXIF | date: 11/27/2010
But I want the scanned images in aperture to reflect the date that the slide was originally shot, e.g. 1973.
I can modify the file creation and modification date from the terminal command line, but Aperture ignores those.
Aperture appears to use the date in the jpeg metadata, but that field is not editable in Aperture as far as I can see.
Is that correct? Is there a possible workaround so that I can actually associate these images in Aperture with the actual photo date, not the scan date?
Thanks,
Frank
Frank,
You actually can modify the EXIF metadata for date/time stamp from within Aperture. You can batch them or do them individually.
Go to the menu Metadata > Adjust Date and Time… and in that dialog, be sure to enable Also change master file [screenshot].
If you select a bath of images, whichever one is the “primary” selection (the one with the heavy white line around it [screenshot]) will be the one you see in the above dialog. This is effective if all photos are off by the same amount, as they will all be shifted accordingly (i.e. all will be shifted back 37 years, 5 months, 6 days, 4 hours… etc). In your case, presumably all the images have the same (or very close to the same) date, and you’re not trying to get the time to the year/month/day/hour/minute/second. If you select all that were shot in the same year or even year/month, and change the time for those all at once, then they will at least show up in the right year when sorting.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Thanks, Joseph. That works great. Somehow I never saw that under the Metadata menu.
Is there a way to adjust the PROJECT date as well? It’s awkward having a project sorted to December 2010 with photos from 1973…
Regards,
Frank
Frank Kurzawa
Frank,
My pleasure. Not quite sure what you mean by “project date” though. The project has no inherent date; it’s just a container for photos and those photos have their own date. If you’re talking about sorting in the Project view, and you have a project that’s not sorting properly, I’d suggest that there could be an image still in there that didn’t get the date change you expected. Look in the Project and sort by date and look for an errant image.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Hmm, that doesn’t agree with what I’m seeing. My first thought when I read your response was that I must have rejected some images b/f doing the adjust date process, and the rejected images don’t show up in the default “Unrated or better” view. But that turned out not to be the problem. I hadn’t rejected any.
But here’s what I do see: If I go to the project view and right click on the project, I can select “Show Project Info”. It shows a floating window that displays, among other things, a date that corresponds to the original date on the scans that I imported. Some things in project info are editable, but not this date.
I suspect the project date was picked from the earliest or latest date of the original scans, but there doesn’t seem to be any provision in the interface to edit it…
Regards,
Frank
Frank Kurzawa
Frank,
Interesting… I can’t really test it here without messing up some file dates, but what about if you create a new project with the altered photos? I wonder if it will inherit the date correctly.
Just select all the photos you want to move, create a new project, and choose “move selected items into new project”. Let me know if that works.
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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Actually that does it. I should have thought of that myself. The new project has a 1973 date and sorts correctly.
It’s a little clumsy when you’re doing this for a hundred projects, but not really a big deal.
Thanks,
Frank
Frank Kurzawa
Frank,
Glad it worked. Admittedly it’s clumsy, but the code probably isn’t there to refresh the project date. After all, most people using the date change feature are fixing their camera time by hours/minutes/seconds, not decades :) Normally it wouldn’t matter.
Another thought; did you happen to try moving a picture out then back in to the Project? Perhaps that triggers a refresh, too.
cheers
-Joseph @ApertureExpert
@PhotoJoseph
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I had the same thought when I noticed that after moving all of the photos out of the old project, the project date of the now-empty project changed from the photo scan date (12/6/2010) to the current date (1/13/2011).
And yes, you’re correct: moving even a single file in or out of a project causes Aperture to recalculate the project “date”.
Thanks,
Frank
Frank Kurzawa