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M
Mikkelikski
Participating Frequently
February 5, 2017
Answered

Filter out photos without capture date and time

  • February 5, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 6172 views

Hey guys.

I have a library with photos from many different sources. Some of the photos lack time and date information, so that when I export them, and upload the exported images to Google Photos, they all get sorted under "today", as the date they are taken. In Lightroom I identify them by looking at the metadata panel to the right in library view. There they lack the lines that says "capture date" and "capture time", in other words, they do not have this information.

Lightroom has an idea about the capture date and time for these photos though, so they are placed in between photos that have date and time information when i sort on date and time. Even though it often is not the correct place for them, sometimes it is quite accurate. But again, in the metadata no information is given on capture date and time. Also lightroom suggest dates and times for many of them when I go into the "edit capture date" option, and it is sometimes off, sometimes quite accurate.


My question:

I want an easy way to find these photos. But I cant seem to get Lightroom to sort them out. I have tried the plug in "any filter" and did filter on all the "date time" + "unknown" variants I could find, but non of them locates only the photos without capture date and time in the metadata.

Anyone that have a solution for me?

Thanks in advance!

Mikkel S. Dahr

    This topic has been closed for replies.
    Correct answer johnrellis

    LR gets very confused when imported photos are missing the industry-standard capture date field EXIF:DateTimeOriginal (typically scans and photos that have been mangled by other applications). It behaves very inconsistently.   My test catalog shows Unknown in the Date column for imported scans missing DateTimeOriginal, but that's the nature of bugs -- the program behaves unpredictably.

    Please add your me-too vote, details of your issue, and your opinion to this longstanding bug report in the official Adobe feedback forum: Lightroom: Still inconsistent capture date/time for photos and videos | Photoshop Family Customer Community

    You can find photos that are missing EXIF:DateTimeOriginal by using the Any Filter plugin with this filter:

    These are exactly the photos for which LR is getting confused. Note that LR will always display some date (typically the file date modified) under thumbnails and sometimes display a Capture Date in the Metadata > Default panel (which will usually differ from the date shown under the thumbnail). You can manually check for the presence of EXIF:DateTimeOriginal by looking in the Metadata > EXIF panel, e.g.

    Once you've identified the photos missing EXIF:DateTimeOriginal, you've already discovered the workaround: Invoke Metadata > Edit Capture Time, and LR will (usually) default the time to the file's date modified, which is often (but not always) correct.   You also have the option of setting the Capture Date to the file's date created (which is often correct, but Windows programs rarely preserve the file date created, and more and more Mac programs fail to as well).

    Regardless, setting the photo's capture date using Edit Capture Time resolves LR's buggy inconsistency and you shouldn't experience any more problems with that photo.

    2 replies

    S
    shonza
    Participant
    May 2, 2020

    I realise I am opening an old thread, but am having a related problem, and this is the best discussion of the issue that I've seen. I would greatly appreciate any help. I am new to LR - using Classic 9 latest release on a new MacBook Air. I keep my images in two main folders on my master drive: photos and "phone photos" for the images imported by various routes over the years from various iphones - both folders have subfolder structures which are YYYY/MM and were imported into the correct Year / Month when they were first imported.

     

    Having selected the "phone photos" Folder in the Folders panel and looking at the images in Grid view, and selecting Sort by Capture Time, the images are sorted strangely - not randomly, and not exactly by File Name, but the first image is IMG_001, then 004 etc. - if I change the sort setting to File Name, then the sort order changes and the first image has a File Name 0b3A and if I scroll down to find IMG_001, it is followed by IMG_002, 003 etc - so other images are included that aren't in the other order (I realise this was really sloppy importing, I've learned a lot since I started, but these are legacy images).

     

    The reason I post this problem here is that when I look at the images in the list I see that for most there is no time information at all (ie the fields don't even show in the Metadata panel when Default or EXIF is selected) and the Edit Capture Time workaround doesn't work. However, one thing I have noticed is that when I select EXIF and IPTC in the metadata panel a time shows up the top under Metadata Status:  Up To Date, which is Metadata Date: and that shows a 2019 date (not the date that the image was taken (by memory) nor the date folder into which the image was sorted whenever it was originally imported). Having said this when I look I look through the files in order (when sorted by Capture Time) the Metadata Date is not the order by which they have been sorted, as I say, they are sorted in fact by file name but only amongst those that seem to have corrupted or no time stamp information.

     

    I have tried removing some of the files and then reimporting them to see whether LR puts them back into the folders they were originally in (ie to see if LR is seeing another date somewhere) and it is sorting them into 2019 / 2020 ie seems to be the Metadata Date that it is using, which was not what was originally seen by LR when they were imported the first time around - so something has been corrupted along the way it seems.

     

    Grateful for any advice as to what is going on and how to correct a large batch of these. Or whether I just have to live with it (could be worse as these are only my random phone photos)

    Reddwarf4ever
    Reddwarf4ever
    Inspiring
    September 12, 2022

    in any filter how do you get filetype = video, trying to search for photos with no capture date thanks

    Reddwarf4ever
    Reddwarf4ever
    Inspiring
    September 12, 2022

    managed it but its reporting as date capture missing but they are in the metadata field ???

     

     

    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    February 5, 2017

    In Library, do these steps:

    1. In the Catalog pane, select All Photographs.

    2. Do Photo > Stacking > Expand All Stacks.

    3. Make sure Library > Enable Filters is checked.

    4. In the Library Filter bar, click Metadata.

    5. Add the Date column and remove the other columns;

    6. In the Date column, scroll to the end and click Unknown:

    M
    MikkelikskiAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    February 6, 2017

    I hugely appreciate the fast suggestion! But unfortunately it did not solve my issue.

    The option to chose date - "unknown" is not available, as you see below. Apparently Lightroom does not think that these images are without date. And in a way it makes sense, because lightroom seems to have a meaning about the date and time of these images, that it suggests when I go into "edit capture time..." with one of these images selected. But as you can see in the image bellow, the chosen image has no capture date and time information in the metadata panel to the right.

    I really appreciate any other suggestions.

    Mikkel

    M
    MikkelikskiAuthor
    Participating Frequently
    February 15, 2017

    LR gets very confused when imported photos are missing the industry-standard capture date field EXIF:DateTimeOriginal (typically scans and photos that have been mangled by other applications). It behaves very inconsistently.   My test catalog shows Unknown in the Date column for imported scans missing DateTimeOriginal, but that's the nature of bugs -- the program behaves unpredictably.

    Please add your me-too vote, details of your issue, and your opinion to this longstanding bug report in the official Adobe feedback forum: Lightroom: Still inconsistent capture date/time for photos and videos | Photoshop Family Customer Community

    You can find photos that are missing EXIF:DateTimeOriginal by using the Any Filter plugin with this filter:

    These are exactly the photos for which LR is getting confused. Note that LR will always display some date (typically the file date modified) under thumbnails and sometimes display a Capture Date in the Metadata > Default panel (which will usually differ from the date shown under the thumbnail). You can manually check for the presence of EXIF:DateTimeOriginal by looking in the Metadata > EXIF panel, e.g.

    Once you've identified the photos missing EXIF:DateTimeOriginal, you've already discovered the workaround: Invoke Metadata > Edit Capture Time, and LR will (usually) default the time to the file's date modified, which is often (but not always) correct.   You also have the option of setting the Capture Date to the file's date created (which is often correct, but Windows programs rarely preserve the file date created, and more and more Mac programs fail to as well).

    Regardless, setting the photo's capture date using Edit Capture Time resolves LR's buggy inconsistency and you shouldn't experience any more problems with that photo.


    Thanks a lot for the fast and thorough answers!! Sure hope Adobe fixes this.
    Thanks also for the procedure to find these photos with anyfilter. It seems to find them all, but it does also find some photos that I have given Date/Time, or has it from before. Does that make sense to you? Is it because they do not have "original" but might have "digitized" date/time?

    Thanks again for providing your knowledge!

    Mikkel

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