Is it possible to keep the "Creation Date" MetaData of a picture when changing its format in Automator?

[jman995x]

Hello All,

When I travel with my friend, we usually take hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures on my iPhone.
For whatever reason, she cannot view HEIC format pictures on her PC, so I use Automator to Batch Convert those photos to .JPEG for her.
However...when I do that, it changes the "Creation Date" to today's date, and the actual Date / Time the picture was taken is thus lost.

Is there a way to convert a picture, using Automator, or even another program, where it will retain the original "Creation Date"?
Because, as of now, I'm using "A Better Finder Attributes", and having to manually compare / re-enter the Creation Dates/Times of TONS of photos, and it's taking me FOREVER.

Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[MacInWin]

You could change the format of the pictures you take as you take them. Settings/Camera/Formats and select Most Compatible and it will start making jpg files directly.

However, "creation date" on the file data relates to the *file* not the image. The EXIF metadata about the image is (or should be) the same as it was. In that EXIF is the date the image was taken. In Photos, for example, I just exported a file of a picture taken November 12, 2020. It was exported as a jpg and was given a creation date of today, which is logical as that is the date the file was created. Opening it in Preview and then Tools/Show Inspector let me look at the exif data for the image. Here is that EXIF data:



You can see that the Date Time Original is still November 12, 2020, even though the file name has a date of today.

So, I guess the question for you is, do you need/want to stick with HEIC, or are you willing to roll back to JPG format at the time the image is taken. If you stick with HEIC and do the conversion, the file date will never automatically match the Date Time Original of the EXIF data. I know of no converter that would do what you want.

 

[jman995x]

You could change the format of the pictures you take as you take them. Settings/Camera/Formats and select Most Compatible and it will start making jpg files directly.

However, "creation date" on the file data relates to the *file* not the image. The EXIF metadata about the image is (or should be) the same as it was. In that EXIF is the date the image was taken. In Photos, for example, I just exported a file of a picture taken November 12, 2020. It was exported as a jpg and was given a creation date of today, which is logical as that is the date the file was created. Opening it in Preview and then Tools/Show Inspector let me look at the exif data for the image. Here is that EXIF data:

View attachment 33288

You can see that the Date Time Original is still November 12, 2020, even though the file name has a date of today.

So, I guess the question for you is, do you need/want to stick with HEIC, or are you willing to roll back to JPG format at the time the image is taken. If you stick with HEIC and do the conversion, the file date will never automatically match the Date Time Original of the EXIF data. I know of no converter that would do what you want.

Thanks for the explanation.
I guess the easiest thing to do is change my iPhone Camera Setting to "Most Compatible" (ie: JPEG) before traveling with my friend, so as to not need to convert from HEIC/F --> JPEG in the first place, and thus keep all of the time-stamp data intact from the beginning.

 

[ferrarr]

I'm sure there is a HEIC viewer in the Microsoft Store.