How to Fix the Time Stamp on Photos
Mac Tip #337, 07 May 2008
I’d taken almost 60 photos on a recent holiday in Hanmer Springs before I remembered that I hadn’t reset the time on the camera since daylight savings ended a few weeks ago. It’s not a huge deal, but it annoyed me that all those photos would be an hour off in their timestamp.
EXIF data is embedded in photos
The problem was not just that the time was wrong when I looked at a list of photos in the Finder. The problem was that the time (and a lot of other information such as shutter speed and aperture) is actually invisibly embedded in the photo. Various programs, and services such as Flickr, access that information and make it available for you and others to see and use.
For example, see the data that came attached to a photo I recently took with my cameraphone (I added the copyright, caption, credit and keywords in the photo software on my computer).
EXIF stands for ‘Exchangeable image file format’. Read all about it at Wikipedia.
How to change EXIF data
It’s not very easy to change the EXIF data. Even if you change the time in the Information panel in iPhoto, the original time is still embedded in the photo.
My screenshot shows a photo selected in iPhoto. At bottom left of the window is where I’ve tried to change the time to 12:16:55. But if I call up Photo Info (Photos menu > Show Photo Info) I can still see the original 13:16:55 is displayed.
A Better Finder Attributes
One solution is a small program called A Better Finder Attributes (€14.95).
It’s easy to use — after installing it Control Click on the files you wish to edit and choose A Better Finder Attributes… from the contextual menu.
Choose a general action from the pop-up and the specific actions (such as removing 1 hour from the time) from the various boxes and buttons in the window. Finally click OK and wait a few moments. Once the changes have been made an alert appears to tell you it’s done.
The screenshot shows me changing the time on one file, but if you select dozens, or even hundreds of files it’ll change them all in one pass.
I made the changes to my photos while they were still on the memory card, and before I imported them to the computer. It was easy to subtract one hour from the time the photos were taken. Meanwhile I’ve adjusted the time on my camera.
A Better Finder Attributes can modify files in many other ways too, but for me adjusting the time on 56 photos in one pass was worth the small fee.
Popularity: 25% [?]
Mail.app’s Photo Browser
Mac Tip #319/12-Dec-2007
While you’re free to use whatever software you like on your Mac, there can be advantages to using the software Apple provides. That’s because it’s highly integrated, allowing you to easily move information between applications.
iPhoto is a good example of this integration, as it shows up in many applications in the form of the Media Manager or Photo Browser.
Note: I’m using Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) when I write these Tips. If you’re using an older version of the Mac Operating System some things may not be the same.
Find a photo
In the old days you had to begin in iPhoto if you wanted to email a photo. Now you start by creating a new message in Apple Mail.
To include a photo from your iPhoto Library click the Photo Browser button in the email message’s Toolbar. The Photo Browser window appears.
Resize the window if you like
The Photo Browser window can be resized in the usual ways. I like to drag the diagonal bars in the bottom right corner to make it bigger so it displays more photos at a time. Drag the dividing line between the list of albums and the photos themselves to make either part bigger.
Find a photo
Select an album in the top part of the window and scroll around or use the search field to find the photo you want to send. Type part of a filename into the search field to filter the list of photos.
Customise the display
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Hold down the Control key and click in the photo area. A contextual menu appears. If you’d prefer to see a list of photos choose Display as List. Call up the contextual menu again to choose to display extra columns for dimensions and file type.
Insert a photo into a message
Select the photo to send and drag it into the body of the email message. Then close the Photo Browser window, or move it out of the way.
Status Bar information
The Status Bar at the bottom of the email message now displays information about the size of the message. It also includes an ‘Image Size’ pop-up that allows you to resize the included image on the fly.
Resize the image
Experiment with different sizes from the pop-up. You’ll see the image dimensions change. In general, as the image is made smaller, so the message size decreases.
In two screenshots I have the photo at its actual size — it fills the message window and ‘weighs’ 79Kb; and at a small size — around a quarter the size of the message window, and ‘weighing’ only 61Kb. I used the OmniDazzle software for the screenshot to add a highlighted border around the Status Bar and darken the rest of the image.
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Because the photo I started with was already sized for a web page or email message the difference wasn’t very noticeable, but if the photo had come straight from my camera the difference in both size and ‘weight’ would have been dramatic.
Keep it small
People who use dial-up don’t appreciate huge email messages, and even people with broadband might not want huge emails. A handy rule of thumb is to try to keep email messages below about 100Kb for dial-up users and below one or two megabytes for broadband users.
If you have a lot of photos to share consider finding another way to do it, such as Flickr or a file-sharing service.
Useful Learning Centre articles
- Flickr your photos
- Flocking to the pictures
- Be careful with Filenames
- Get the picture
- Power Up to a Flash Slideshow
- The 12 Days of Email
- YouSendIt — email attachments made easy
And be sure to check the full list of Learning Centre articles.
Mail.app has other interesting ‘integration’ features too. We’ll look at them in other Tips.
Popularity: 83% [?]
