What to do when your time is out of control

Want a date? 

What's cool about Apple Photos is that it lets you see your entire photo collection all in one place. You can drop all your old pictures right in the library along with the iPhone shots you took just yesterday. Your whole life right there in your pocket. 

You don't even have to fuss with folders and albums - for years and such - if you don't care to, because Photos does that automatically. It can do that because digital images contain data with the time they were created/taken and Apple Photos uses that to sort everything chronologically. A big time saver if you have pictures that go back a generation or so. 

There's a catch, of course. The whole thing assumes that the date stamp on each photo is correct, and in the case of images scanned from old prints, it's not. The digital date stamp will be the date and time the print was scanned, not the time the original photo was taken. Or worse, there may be no date stamp at all. In that case you'll have a collection of random photos that show up as January 1, 1960 or some other odd date that's as old as the computer can assign. 

Another situation is with digital cameras that aren't set correctly. We are so used to our iPhones always being on the right time that we forget to change the camera date stamp settings when we cross time zones. Or maybe we never set them at all. In that case, when we collect our photos from a trip, the pictures won't be in sync between our iPhone and camera shots. The family is enjoying a beachside sunset and then suddenly riding elephants under the noonday sun. 

As it happens, Photos on the Mac can easily fix this by selecting the incorrect photo(s) and choosing Image > Adjust Date and Time. . . from the Menu bar. 

Put in the adjusted date and time you want, making sure the Time Zone is correct and apply it to the photo. Now the picture will show up in the time slot you changed it to and make for a more useful sequence. If you choose multiple photos, note that they will all be adjusted by the same amount of time - not to the same time - so that they maintain their relationship. This makes it easy to adjust a whole camera card of photos at once and have them fit naturally into a collection with other devices. This also works for video. 

So have fun with Apple Photos and remember to stay on time.