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johnrellis
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March 11, 2026

P: Incorrect behavior when changing the year before 2001 in Edit Capture Time

  • March 11, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 63 views

When you change the year in Metadata > Edit Capture Time to before 2001, the milliseconds goes negative and one is added to whatever value you enter for seconds.  This is likely related to the Cocoa timestamp epoch of 1/1/2001. 

 

If instead you change the year to 2018, the milliseconds gets decremented by one (also incorrect).

 

To reproduce on LR 15.2 / Mac OS 26.2:

 

1. Open the attached tiny catalog.

 

2. Select the photo and do Metadata > Edit Capture Time.

 

3. Click in the year and type 2019 (quickly, to avoid another Edit Capture Time bug).  Observe that the milliseconds field stays at 22 (correct).

 

4. Click cancel, do Edit Capture Time, click in the year, and type 2018. Observe that the milliseconds field gets changed to 21 (incorrect)

 

5. Click cancel, do Edit Capture Time, click in the year, and type 2001. Observe that the milliseconds field gets changed to 21 (incorrect).

 

6. Click cancel, do Edit Capture Time, click in the year, and type 2000. Observe that the milliseconds field gets changed to -97 (incorrect).

 

7. Click the seconds field and type 42. Observe that the seconds changes to 43 (incorrect).

    2 replies

    Participant
    March 20, 2026

    I’ve seen this, too!  Didn’t realize that it was happening when setting the date to before 2001.  I do a lot of scanning decades-old negatives and setting them to the actual date they were taken, which is often before 2001, so I kinda thought it happened with everything that had a changed date.

    I will say, that if you just tab through all the fields in “corrected time,” the negative milliseconds will disappear and then you can put the correct date and time in and it will stick.

    Rikk Flohr_Photography
    Community Manager
    March 11, 2026

    Thanks for the report, ​@johnrellis 

    Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org