Rating old JPG photos almost destroyed important dates without me knowing

[Tir]

Just had a very worrying occurrence while testing. I was browsing and rating old JPGs on my HD from an old phone, and apparently the front camera hadn't added proper EXIF date data to it. So the only date to go on was its date modified date, which was a very important date/time from 2010 that I wanted to keep.

I know it's probably my fault for not thinking that rating the JPGs would "modify" the JPG itself, but I didn't realise this until later, and luckily I had a backup of that photo with its date intact.

- Is there some setting that will safeguard me against this?
- And / or is there a way to automatically go through many folders and add proper capture dates from date modified fields, but only for photos that lack that EXIF information? I don't want to change photos that don't need to be touched.

Thanks

[Kirk Baker]

Just had a very worrying occurrence while testing. I was browsing and rating old JPGs on my HD from an old phone, and apparently the front camera hadn't added proper EXIF date data to it. So the only date to go on was its date modified date, which was a very important date/time from 2010 that I wanted to keep.

I know it's probably my fault for not thinking that rating the JPGs would "modify" the JPG itself, but I didn't realise this until later, and luckily I had a backup of that photo with its date intact.

- Is there some setting that will safeguard me against this?

No.  PM will modify your JPEGs when you ask it to do so.  This will affect the modification date/time.

- And / or is there a way to automatically go through many folders and add proper capture dates from date modified fields, but only for photos that lack that EXIF information? I don't want to change photos that don't need to be touched.

I believe that ExifTool can create EXIF information for images that lack them.  It is a command-line application (though there are apps that work in conjunction with it and provide a UI though I have no experience with them.)

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

HTH,

-Kirk

[Mick O (Camera Bits)]

I believe using the {datesort} variable with JPEGS with no EXIF will return the current "modified" date on the photo.   You might be able to use that variable to put your crucial date info the filename, or an unused metadata field in the Stationery Pad (something like "Edit Status").     Then in Photo Mechanic if you needed to sort by that date after you modify the files you could create a custom sort. (In this case by {status}

You might experiment with some files that are noncritical and see.  I just tried it on some of my old phone pics and this seemed to work.

(Edit: I just need to add that if you do try this, you really should test first to see if it gets the result you want. Your phone's jpgs may keep dates in other fields that mine didn't have - that's why I don't know for sure if it will work for you)

-Mick

[Franz Dur]

You might use ExiftoolGUI (http://u88.n24.queensu.ca/~bogdan/) to directly manipulate dates in raw and jpg/tiff files. Works well.

Francis

[Tir]

I ended up just searching my root Photos folder for "*" in Explorer to list all my photos at once, and sorted by "date taken" to reveal the ones missing it. I added them all now, so I won't run into this problem again.