To sort on the Photo date you'll need to use a photo app. So, your photo has the correct date, and so does the file, but they are different things. The problem is that the Finder doesn't work with Exif. The File date is - quite accurately - reported as the date of Export. When you export from iPhoto to the Finder new file is created containing your Photo (and its Exif). Photo applications like Photos, iPhoto, Aperture, Lightroom, Picasa, Photoshop etc get their date and time from the Exif metadata. Regardless if what the file date says, this is the actual time recorded by the camera. The date and time that your camera snapped the Photograph is recorded in the Exif metadata. Photographs have also got both Exif and IPTC metadata.

The problem with File metadata is that it can easily change as the file is moved from place to place or exported, e-mailed, uploaded etc. This tells you nothing about the contents of the file, just the File itself.

There are two kinds of metadata involved when you consider jpeg or other image file. The Finder is, after all, a file manager not a photo manager, like Lightroom. It just isn't shown in Mac's Finder (why?)īecause the Finder doesn't support Exif, which is photographic metadata, only file metadata.

Find files by date on mac os