I understand and appreciate the power which PM gives me to both ingest and add metadata at the same time. However, I am one of those people who prefer to just ingest as the very first step. Yes, I am aware of the obvious time-saving benefits offered by PM by doing several things at once, but the full "documentation trail" is important to me.
In my own pseudo-DAM process, I always download an unadulterated original of the JPEG to generate the baseline backup file before any tagging, metadata or rating process takes place. As I said earlier, I rely on the original capture date/time to be saved as the "Date Modified" file attribute.
Subsequent changes to that file--say, cropping or keywording--are indicated with a variety of codes integrated into the filename itself. The "Date Modified" attribute is only used to help my backup systems to track which files have been changed, and thus require backing up again.
I guess I'm answering my own question. In short, use a tool other than PM if all I want is to ingest with the original capture date/time stamped as the modification date in Windows. Then use PM when metadata work is required on subsequent versions of the same file.
A feature request for v4.6.9 would seem redundant at this stage. Haven't moved to your newer v5.x yet but hope this ability is either included, or could be, down the line.
Thank you for your insights.
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Cecil