An AppleScript droplet to change the creation date

Jul 07, '06 07:30:03AM

Contributed by: spacericker9k

When scanning old photos -- say from the 1980s -- logically the date of the scanning becomes the files' creation date. The problem is that afterwards, when you list the 1980s pictures alongside other pictures (in iPhoto, the Finder, or wherever), the scanned pictures are going to be out of real-time chronological order. That is, the 1980s pictures should come before any pictures taken with your digital camera.

To change the creation date, I wrote this small AppleScript droplet application. Copy and paste the text into a new script in Script Editor, and then save it as an application.

With the script in place, I take the 1980s picture files that I just scanned, and drop the file(s) or the folder onto the application. The script then asks me for the new creation date (ie: 1/1/1985), and then it does its work. There are shareware solutions out there that do this, but the ones I found were a tad overbuilt, or not as quick to use. I wanted it to be fast-to-use and super simple. My script could be modified to make date entry easier, but for me, this is really all I need.

[robg adds: When I tested this, it worked if I dropped a file (or multiple files) onto the applet. If I dropped a folder of files, however, nothing seemed to happen.]

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