Apple Photo Date Changes

I'm scanning pictures, so the dates in the metadata become the scanning date rather than the capture date, so I'm faced with this problem, too. As you say, dates are hard to change.

Here's what I do instead: I put the date in the Title of the picture so that, when I sort by title, they come out in date order-- at least according to the dates I want on them. I use the app Photos Workbench ($22) from Houdah to batch change titles. (It does more things, too.) Here's a sample of the title change dialog:

This shows a counter included to sequentially number the titles. You can put these things in any order.

This shows the choices you get for including in the title:

There are also user generated scripts available to do similar things, but not all at once. Here's one example:

Batch Change Title to Text w/Padded Sequential Numbers

If you catch the pictures before they get to Photos, you can use 3rd Party apps like GraphicConverter ($40) to have the capture date in the metadata replace the Finder date. But very few apps can be used directly on pictures in the Photos Library. GraphicConverter, though has lots of uses, and it's always open when I work with pictures.

Here is a user offered AppleScriptsthat might do what you want: Script: Batch Change the Date and Time to a Fixed Date

Update: I'm running Ventura and am having trouble getting that scrip to work. Hope you have better luck.