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e.j.v92227290
e.j.v92227290
Participating Frequently
February 20, 2022
Pregunta

Auto change 'date taken' without impacting edit history

  • February 20, 2022
  • 2 respuestas
  • 2085 visualizaciones

I have a collection with also many older family pictures (dating as far back as around 1900). Obviously, these were originally scanned and imported into my LR Catalog as TIF files.

I have alread renamed the files, using a syntax with the following template (I do that for all my photos/pictures): YYYY MM DD - HHMMSS (with options _## appended).

Obviously, I don't always know when a picture of e.g. a grand - grand parent was taken, so sometimes names look like 1901 _01.TIFF or 1952 01 _06.TIFF.

I edited / improved the files in LR over time.

Now I'd really like to use a filer and e.g. show all pictures that were taken in 1936. Problem is that "Picture Taken" metadata reflects the date the picture was scanned.

I'd like to change that, and that is possible external to LR but that resets the edit history (and I do NOT want that).

Is it possible (e.g. internall with a plug-in or maybe using 'standard functionality' - I'm new and come from LR6, now using the latest LRC) to change this somehow without impacting edit history? Most brilliant would be if the date could be automatically read from my filename somehow.

Any suggestion would be very much appreciated.

 

Este tema ha sido cerrado para respuestas.

2 respuestas

johnrellis
johnrellis
Legend
February 20, 2022

"if the date could be automatically read from my filename somehow."

 

I don't know of a plugin that could do this. But if you're technically adept with command-line scripting, you could do this using the free Exiftool utility.   

e.j.v92227290
e.j.v92227290Autor
Participating Frequently
February 21, 2022

There is a plug-in actually (from John Beardsworth, called "Capture Time to Exif") but when I played with that maybe a year ago (when I was still using LR6) it appeared that as this method also changes the file from the 'outside' (with Exiftool). LR will flag this and opt to either import the outside metadata change (which destroys my edit info - and that is not what I want) or discard the external info and keep the existing LR metadata (which discards the external date change).

Somehow, the change should be made from unside LR. There's tools like "Search Replace Transfer" (from the same author as mentioned above) that show this is possible but I have yet to find the real solution.

Which amazes me a bit as I'm guessing more LR users work with many scanned and therefore older photos. Wouldn't it be nice than if one could search and filter in LR to e.g. should pictures taken in a certain data-range?

I know: next time I should change that 'date taken' field BEFORE importing into LR... but it's too late now.

JohanElzenga
Community Expert
JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
Community Expert
February 21, 2022

Johan, thanks for your response but AFAIK it doesn't work like that. I always have the option to save metadata to file enabled. As said, when one makes an external change to a file, LR will detect and provide the two options I described above and if I accept the date-change, my metadata is reset.


@e.j.v92227290 wrote:

Johan, thanks for your response but AFAIK it doesn't work like that. I always have the option to save metadata to file enabled. As said, when one makes an external change to a file, LR will detect and provide the two options I described above and if I accept the date-change, my metadata is reset.


I use an EXIF Tools plugin myself, to add lens data to images shot with manual lenses, so I know from personal experience that this should work the way I described. Try to do a forced 'write metadata to files' before you use such a plugin, rather than relying on automatically written xmp files. And if the plugin offers you the choice to write to the file or to XMP, then make sure to select XMP.

Also, please remember that Lightroom does have a built-in option to change the capture date...

 

-- Johan W. Elzenga
    JohanElzenga
    Community Expert
    JohanElzengaCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    February 20, 2022

    Lightroom has a built-in option to change the capture date/time. It's under the 'Metadata' menu in the Library module. https://www.lightroomqueen.com/change-exif-dates/

    -- Johan W. Elzenga
    e.j.v92227290
    e.j.v92227290Autor
    Participating Frequently
    February 21, 2022

    On the built-in option, yes, I'm aware of that and I apologize for not indicating this more clearly but that's not a solution as I need to set dates for thousands of files and I don't want to to that manually for all obviously. 

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