Update creation date to actual creation date?

Even if you are exporting the original file, the file creation of the original in Photos may be different from the date the photo has been taken, for several reasons, for example:

• If the file has been synced with iCloud to your Mac, the file creation date may have been changed to the day the file has been downloaded from iCloud
• If you are exporting to a different volume, the file creation date can change.
• Photos may have replaced the original in iCloud by a different original, if two files synced to iCloud are recognised as duplicates.

Are you using iCloud Photos?

It's odd, but when I (using Monterey and Photos 7) export original, the Finder shows the original creation date. It shows the export date when exporting edited images.

But what you need is an Exif editor. There are several listed in the App store, but I use a more versatile program, GraphicConverter ($40), that I've kept current for 30 years! In its browser, you can manipulate Exif data, IPTC data, and even stuff you see in the Mac Info window. It also lets you do batch name changing of files. And, while it works for all kinds of files, it has only limited video editing.

This shows me selecting some images and choosing the Date manipulation. You can see that you can set the "Creation Date" for finder to the Exif Date, which is what you would like.

You can hunt around for other Exif editors at the App store or with Google-- this is just the one I have had good experience with. Also, I email the creator of the program when I run into something confusing, and he always answers quickly. (Again, for 30 years.)

Drat-- I wasn't thinking of videos. Videos don't always have Exif data. Nonetheless, when I export unmodified videos, it presents the creation date (or maybe the upload date-- but definitely not today's date) in the Finder.

I just tried exporting a not original video file-- the finder shows today's date. I then used the Exif editing in GraphicConverter, saying set creation date using Exif, and it correctly fixed the date.

Maybe the problem is the video format-- I've been looking at MP4s.

As léonie says, you can include that date explicitly-- in the file name, if you do it before you load it into Photos, or as the title. When you export "not the original" you can choose to use the title as the file name, so you can include the date and the client's name and whatever else.

I find it unsettling! Here are a couple of exports I made of the same file, the first is "Unmodified Original," and the second is the edited version. Monterey 12.6

For videos I would always write the capture date right into the filename, as there is no exif standard to save the capture date of a video.