Change photo creation to arbitrary date

[30west]

I have really tried to find the answer to this by searching the entire forum, but have not found what I am looking for. In short, I have hundreds of photos that are scans of old photos and carry a "creation date" of when they were scanned. For example, a couple hundred show 2019 as year created, but I want to change them all to 1955. Other folders would be re-dated per my best guess of when they were shot. I am embarrassed to ask to be "spoon fed" the correct syntax, but the examples I have found do not solve my issue. Using MACOS Monterrey...Thanks in advance...

[wywh]

Move to the folder where the images you want to modify are and then set their metadata date:

Set DateTimeOriginal to Any Arbitrary Timestamp:

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place '-DateTimeOriginal=1955:01:01 12:00:00' .

Or, better yet, Set AllDates (DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate, and ModifyDate) to Any Arbitrary Timestamp:

exiftool -m -P -overwrite_original_in_place '-AllDates=1955:01:01 12:00:00' .

If you want also the file dates the same, then do also this (notice that years before 1970 might not show correctly, though):

exiftool -m -overwrite_original_in_place '-FileCreateDate<ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal' '-FileModifyDate<ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal' .

I'd also set the filename to reflect the date (I use YYYY-MMDD-hhmm-ss.*):

exiftool -fileOrder FileName '-FileName<DateTimeOriginal' -d '%Y-%m%d-%H%M-%S%%+2nc.%%e' .

I usually use GraphicConverter's browser to set these kind of datetimes and filenames via a GUI with certain intervals (1-10 minutes between scanned images) so you might want to check it.

[30west]

thanks for all of that info...including the potential use of Graphic Converter. Using MACOS Monterrey 12.5.1, when I run the tool, it reports that it has updated the file(s). Looking at the Finder "Info", it shows that "Content Created" has changed to the new value, so I think that solves my issue...which is that different photo cataloging apps seems to use different values for sorting and Apple Photos seems to  be very unmanageable without modifying these dates.

I look forward to experimenting with Graphic Converter...so thanks again.