Use 'touch' to organize pictures for iPhoto

Jan 08, '02 08:49:12PM

Contributed by: joshb

touch, a terminal command, is a useful utility for changing the create dates on files before importing to iPhoto. By changing the create/modified date, you can change the date information that will display in iPhoto and where it will put the photo once imported. Open a terminal and type:

  touch -t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]] FILENAME
Used in conjunction with wildcards such as * or *.jpg for example this can make it easy to get photos imported with the proper dates.

This can be quite useful for changing the file dates on files that were burned to CD at a date much different than when they were shot. Fine tweaking of the time will impact the way the photos sort if you sort by date.

From my experience you can't simply move photos within iPhoto's structure. If you get them in with the wrong date you'll have to copy them out to another folder and then re-import them.

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