How can I set time zones for accurate timestamps in Photos app?

If you take a picture at 11am in Scotland, and then you come back to, say, Dallas, and you see it says 5 am, then it really is showing the time that the picture was taken. That's what time zones are for--to figure out your local time when someone far off tells you when something happened. If you want it to show the far off local time, then don't mess with the time zone.

We use the Time Zone settings when we want to compare pictures take in different time zones-- so I can figure out what I was doing in Dallas at the moment the King arrived at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh.

If you want to fix what you see, then gather all the pictures into an album, and select them all. The open the info window and choose Adjust.

You'll see the time and date of the first picture. Fix that, and all the other pictures will change by the same amount. They won't change to be all the same-- they change by the same amount.

Does this work for you?

Leave your Date & Time Settings to "Set Automatically", instead of manually changing your Time Zone. I just reviewed pics I took in Washington DC and they correctly showed the time they were taken, even though I was viewing them on the West Coast.

lipwak wrote: …Totally wacky results. If it could adjust the day and/or hour only, it would be more useful.

Not my experience at all. It works as I said (which may appear wacky if you're expecting something different,) but it works perfectly for adjusting all the pictures by 5 hours, for instance. If the first says 6/1/2025 6:15am, and the second is 6/2/2025 1:22pm, then when you change the first to 6/1/2025 11:15am, the second will become 6/2/2025 7:22pm-- just what you want, I think (if Eastern time.)

lipwak wrote: … There's that whole creation date vs content created difference that confuses me too.

Creation Date usually means the date that the picture was taken as recorded by the camera. The camera also creates a file to transfer the image, and it probably has the same date. The Image Creation Date is stored in the picture's metadata, called Exif, a sort of sub-file that can move around with the image file. 

Photos (and Lightroom, for instance,) are Image Management Systems. When Photos shows a date, it shows the date the image was created. (It allows that to be altered in its database, but the original file retains the original date.) 

Finder (and Explorer) are File Management Systems, so when they show a date, they show the date the File was created. Finder works with many types of files, and "Image creation date" and Exif metadata just don't mean much to Finder. When files are moved around, the file creation date remains the same, but sometimes copying or transferring creates a new file, so you get a whole new file creation date that has nothing to do with the image. But the Image Creation Date continues the same in the metadata.

Often, email, text, and other transfer systems strip the metadata to maintain the privacy of the sender, so the Image Creation Date is lost. All Finder can do is attach the new File creation date. All Photos can do is substitute the File creation date for the Image Creation Date. 

"Adjust" in Photos changes the date in the Photos Database, so this is what it shows in the info window. But Photos is a non-destructive editor, and the original picture file is kept unmodified. So the adjusted date will appear when exporting an edited version with File>Export>Export nn Photos, but the original date will appear when exported with File>Export>Export Unmodified Originals. 

Does that help?