How can I edit my EXIF Date info without changing Time info?

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Level 1

8 points

How can I edit my EXIF Date info without changing Time info?

I recently went on a shoot with three cameras, one of which was set at the wrong date (sometime in 2012). I now want to correct all the date stamps on the photos taken by the camera with the bad date settings but am finding this next to impossible to do quickly - I have 416 incorrectly dated photos.

In iPhoto '06 you could go to Photos - Batch Change and a dialogue would pop up with separate Date and Time boxes; I am using iPhoto '08 which has merged these two fields into one, meaning I now lose the correct Time of Day EXIF metadata for each photo I try to change the incorrect Date EXIF metadata on.

I have googled for a separate app to do this, but none do this - they all seem to change everything in one go.

How can I fix my problem and change only the Date info while keeping the existing Time info in a Batch process?

Posted on Jul 26, 2011 3:25 AM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

166,098 points

Jul 26, 2011 3:36 AM in response to Basilisk

Doesn't 08 have an Adjust Date and Time command? (Sorry but it's been a while since I used that version).

If so, and you know that, for instance, all these dates are 1 year off, then select all the pics, change the Year only, and that's what will be changed on the pics.

Regards

TD

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Answer 2

Basilisk Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 26, 2011 5:06 AM in response to Yer_Man

The command (Photo - Batch Change OR Photo - Change Date and Time) in iPhoto 08 treats the data in the DateTime field as a single string. If I change a single element eg Year, the process doesn't seem to edit the string, but tries to overwrite it. If I do not enter data in the boxes for eg Time an alert pops up and tells me there are empty boxes and the process cancels itself.

In iPhoto 06 I was shown a screenshot of how back then the Date and Time boxes in the dialog were separate and one could be edited without affecting the data held in the other. Perhaps this is what you were thinking of?

It would be interesting to know how it works in iPhoto 11 or Aperture. It seems the iLife 08 apps were 'dumbed down' a la Microsoft strategy in order to move users up to a more expensive product. iMovie 08 was less good than 06 and I now find the same is true for iPhoto. Perhaps the edit behaviour is now restricted to Aperture, although from reading what I can online about Aperture it appears to follow the same 'overwrite' process, rather than an 'edit' process.

The process should be simple to write code for, take the Date Time string, parse it, edit the correct bit, merge it back, write the changes back to disk. I just can't find any way to do this.

Info:

The camera that caused all the problems was an Olympus 'Tough' waterproof camera which also has a joystick for setting options and while in my pocket managed to change its language to Thai as well as the clock time. All my 416 pics on that camera are now dated as if they were taken in October 2012!

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Answer 3

Yer_Man

Level 10

166,098 points

Jul 26, 2011 5:27 AM in response to Basilisk

Like I say it's a while since I used 08, but I can certainly roll back 365 or even 400 days on iPhoto 11, without changing the time using the adjust date and time command.

Aperture uses exactly the same mechanism.

It's even longer since I used iPhoto 6. 😉

I did a quick google search and found this:

http://joemaller.com/970/date-shifting-in-iphoto-08/

This shows exactly the same process as iPhoto 09, 11 and Aperture, and exactly what I can use to time shift a group of photographs.

I don't think that the 08 apps were "dumbed down" at all. If I recall correctly, iPhoto gained lossless editing at that point - a very significant enhancement, and no, I don't think there was any effort to push people to change to more expensive products. IIRC every version of iPhoto since then has been less expensive. Apple did do a major rewrite of iMovie at the point, but left iMovie6 available for free as a download for two years. iMovie 11, though a very different interface, has long since overtaken iMovie 6 in capability.

Regards

TD

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Answer 4

Basilisk Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 26, 2011 5:10 PM in response to Yer_Man

Thanks very much for this clarity Terence. I have clearly been misled by the two different commands for changing the date of a photo, and confused by the Batch command not being the command to use to change batches of dates, and the lack of any information in Help.

I'm glad you were hanging around mate! I've run the command and it works as you described. Thanks! I only had to do stills and video separately and then it was easy.

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