P: Edit Capture Time issue - Need a way to set all photos selected to same date & time

The plugin that's most relevant here is Capture Time To Exif, which makes it easy to set the capture time of a batch of photos all to the same date.

Thanks, John. I know how to use ExifTool, but I am always (always!) confused by the large number of date fields, and never can remember which fields Lightroom uses and what it calls them internally. I have many times changed various date/time fields using ExifTool, and then found that they didn't have the desired effect in Lightroom. 

I thought that by using Lightroom's dialog I could set the dates, but I see that it isn't even designed to do what I need (in spite of the label "Adjust to a specified date and time.")

I'll review my notes and try again. Sigh...

PS--I do have your plugin, so I'll give that a try next.

See this earlier reply for a plugin that can set all the photos to the same date and time: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/edit_capture_time_issue_need_a_way_to_set_all...

In the original thread, Tom Mickow wrote:

Lr only adjusts the most selected image to the exact date & time you set.  All the other images that are selected aren't set to that exact date, they're adjusted by the same amount.  In your example, setting your most selected image to a date in 1925 date changed it by 86 odd years, so all the other selected images changed by that same amount.  It's been that way as long as I can remember.

If you'd like to have another option that allows you to set all the selected images to the exact same date & time, I'd look for another post on the subject and vote for that feature request.  It's been requested a number of times over the years and I definitely agree that it would be nice to have.

If/when I need to do it, I use the ExifTool utility by Phil Harvey.  I'm pretty sure there are also some plugins that accomplish the task, although I don't know any names off hand.

Edit Capture Time used to work (at least, I remember it working). Now it seems to be completely broken. Even if I click "Adjust to a specified date and time", it adjusts all the photos relative to their current dates, which is completely wrong, and very frustrating.

Here are two photos that were taken in May, 1925. One of them has the wrong date.
I try to adjust the dates of both of them

and afterwards, Lightroom has marked one as having been taken in the 19th century

I have run into many issues with setting the dates for historical photos, but I thought I had figured this out. (It would be nice if Lightroom had the facility to set the XMP metadata that correspond to the date of the image vs. the date that this copy was made, but I have never been able to make that work). But at a minimum, Edit Capture Time "Adjust to a specified date and time" really should work correctly. Otherwise you have to edit each photo, and you cannot copy and paste into this dialog.

See my reply at the top of this topic: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/edit_capture_time_issue_need_a_way_to_set_all...

I scan some old film images to my Hard Drive, as Jpg's then import them with LR CC 2015.5.  At this stage the metadata panel shows no dates or times.   I then select several of the scanned images and use the Metadata -> Edit Capture time menu, select "Adjust to a Specific Date/Time" and key in a a specific date & time in the "Corrected Time" box and click "Change All".  

What I expect, is that all the selected images will be set to the date/time I typed in.  But, this is not what happens.  What happens is that the active image gets the typed in date and time but the other images get a similar, but different date time.  

For example, The file time on the scanned image A is 5/9/2016 6:42 pm and the file on img B is 5/9/2016 6:44 pm.  Then in LR I import these two images using the move option and a file rename preset.  When the import is done, the moved files have the same file date/time as before the move however the metadata in LR does not show any date fields (I have EXIF and IPTC view selected).  
Now I select both images with the first one being the active image, go to menu  Metadata -> Edit Capture time.  In the dialog that comes up I select "Adjust to a specific date and time", I fill in 10/15/1984 2:00:00 pm and click the "Change All" button.  Now in LR, there are two dates showing for each image.  The first image (which was the active image when I did the date change) has 10/15/1984 2:00:00 pm for both the "Date Time Original" and "Date Time" metadata fields as expected.  However, the 2nd image has 10/15/1984 2:01:39 pm for those two fields.  In other words the 2nd images' time is 1 minute and 39 seconds later than the date time I typed in.  

This is not what the text "Adjust to a Specific Date/time" implies should happen.

changing date taken with many pictures selected doesnt work correct. If the active pic has the wanted date, selecting "setting time" (first option) and clicking "changing all" does nothing. If you give another date, only some pic changes the date!! (Lightroom 6.3, no cloud version"

Lightroom 3.4.1 running on Win XP/SP3.

Error when selecting a group of photos in the grid view and then Metadata-->Edit Capture Time.

The capture time is only updated for some of the photos, and the remaining photos' capture times are either unchanged or changed to an unpredictable date/time. Changing metadata for photos individually works fine.

The 'edit capture time' behavior discussed in http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh... is counter intuitive and is a royal pain for us folk using non digital source images where the capture time is only known to a day or month or less accuracy. Not having flickr-style range dates is a root issue but the 'edit capture time' setting should IMHO do what it is told - set all photos to a specified time.