Inspiring

Answered

in my library many old pictures are displayed with the wrong date

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
September 21, 2017
3 replies
3017 views

on the disc each image has two dates.

1) date picture was taken

2) date picture was stored on disc

for images scanned in from slides or negatives the date stored on disc is recorded in Lightroom as the date the picture was taken.

that implies that, when displaying images sorted on date picture was taken the complete view is a mess.

does anyone has a solution for this ?

in view of the number of images manually correcting the date is no option

thanks in advance

recording date

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Correct answer johnrellis

If you had uploaded a sample photo to Dropbox or similar, we could have saved you many hours of work.

As you've discovered, PSE allows capture date/times with unknown (unspecified) seconds, minutes, hours, days, or months, but LR does not. The industry standards are ambiguous about unknown date/time fields (details upon request), and most programs don't implement them. Further, at least as of version 8, PSE had many bugs with unknown fields (and knowing Adobe, I very much doubt they ever fixed these bugs). LR gets confused by them. Windows File Explorer also doesn't follow the industry standards.

A few people have long requested that LR implement unknown date/time fields -- see this feature request in the official Adobe feedback forum: Lightroom ignores partial dates imported from Elements | Photoshop Family Customer Community . You could add your me-too vote and detailed opinion to that feature request, but given how old it is and the ambiguous industry standards, I doubt that Adobe will pay much attention. We could at least hope that LR did a better job of converting PSE catalogs containing dates with unknown fields, but again Adobe has shown little interest in fixing the numerous problems with PSE catalog conversion.

I use the convention that an unknown time is represented as "00:00:00", an unknown day as "1", and an unknown month as "1". So if you just knew the year, it would be represented as "1943:01:01 00:00:00". Another person has mentioned he uses a similar convention but also adds a special keyword indicating the date has unknown fields. This approach has obvious ambiguities, but it's better than nothing.

You could use the free ExifTool to find all photos with unknown date/time fields and then fill them in with 0, but ExifTool has a steep learning curve, so unless you're very experienced with scripting command-line tools, I recommend against trying it.

H

hvanderentAuthor

Inspiring

i have spent most of the day correcting date/time stamps in one Lightroom catalogue. .

i did this by making equal selections in Lightroom and Elements to obtain the correct dates/times.

It turns out that all incorrect items in Lightroom were originally pecified in Elements without a month, day or time.

so, somewhere in the properties of the image on the disc a correct date is visible but Lightroom knows the contents are not valid.

I just wonder how ?

So, where I suspected a software error it appears to be a design choice that i have serious doubts about.

Lightroom should not present incorrect dates by assumption but simply insert the information it receives (even if not complete) and enable the user the change that in what he knows to be correct. The fact that a month, day and time are mandatory and valid goes against the library function where such information from an analogue source simply is not always available.

It is a pity that the functionality of Elements is not included in Lightroom.

I just hope Adobe does not just say "So be it"

I now need to look at my other catalogues how best to change them as well

johnrellisCorrect answer

Legend

If you had uploaded a sample photo to Dropbox or similar, we could have saved you many hours of work.

As you've discovered, PSE allows capture date/times with unknown (unspecified) seconds, minutes, hours, days, or months, but LR does not. The industry standards are ambiguous about unknown date/time fields (details upon request), and most programs don't implement them. Further, at least as of version 8, PSE had many bugs with unknown fields (and knowing Adobe, I very much doubt they ever fixed these bugs). LR gets confused by them. Windows File Explorer also doesn't follow the industry standards.

A few people have long requested that LR implement unknown date/time fields -- see this feature request in the official Adobe feedback forum: Lightroom ignores partial dates imported from Elements | Photoshop Family Customer Community . You could add your me-too vote and detailed opinion to that feature request, but given how old it is and the ambiguous industry standards, I doubt that Adobe will pay much attention. We could at least hope that LR did a better job of converting PSE catalogs containing dates with unknown fields, but again Adobe has shown little interest in fixing the numerous problems with PSE catalog conversion.

I use the convention that an unknown time is represented as "00:00:00", an unknown day as "1", and an unknown month as "1". So if you just knew the year, it would be represented as "1943:01:01 00:00:00". Another person has mentioned he uses a similar convention but also adds a special keyword indicating the date has unknown fields. This approach has obvious ambiguities, but it's better than nothing.

You could use the free ExifTool to find all photos with unknown date/time fields and then fill them in with 0, but ExifTool has a steep learning curve, so unless you're very experienced with scripting command-line tools, I recommend against trying it.

H

hvanderentAuthor

Inspiring

in my opinion (as a former application developer) your should never present the user with incorrect information or allow him to import this.

So, in importing from a file or from an Elements catalogue Adobe should either reject entering the picture or flag is as incorrect.

But from a functional point of view , Lightroom simply lacks functionality.

As to dropbox, the time i spent was used for repairing the catalog. that time would have been required anyway

johnrellis

Legend

on the disc each image has two dates.
1) date picture was taken
2) date picture was stored on disc
for images scanned in from slides or negatives the date stored on disc is recorded in Lightroom as the date the picture was taken.

To build on Abambo's reply: For the capture date shown in LR, LR normally uses the EXIF metadata capture date stored in the photo. If it can't find a capture date in the metadata, it uses the file's Date Modified, the date/time that Windows or OS X last modified the file.

Since it appears that LR is using the file's Date Modified, that suggests the scans don't contain any capture date in their EXIF metadata. Do you think the scans do contain a capture date in the EXIF metadata but that LR isn't read it for some reason? (You would have had to set such a date using some other software.) If so, upload one of those files to Dropbox or similar and post the sharing link here, and we can take a look at why LR isn't finding the EXIF capture date.

If you haven't stored a capture date in the file, then as Abambo indicated, you'll have to use the menu command Metatata > Edit Capture Time to set it.

H

hvanderentAuthor

Inspiring

to avoid any misunderstanding.

i am in the process of changing over from Elements to Lightroom.

so with Elements the date the picture was taken is included in the scanned files and in Element the date is reflected properly.

i mentioned the scanning because it only happens with those images, so far with digital images no problems.

i have included, for one picture:

. a screen copy of Elements showing the correct date in the bottom left

. a screen copy of Lightroom showing the creation date on disc top left and bottom right with the meta-data

. property displays of windows of the image on disc.

Although the language is in Dutch I think you can follow this easily

("genomen op" meaning date recorded and "gemaakt op/gewijzigd op" meaning created/changed")

I hope this clarifies the point i was trying to make i.e. Lightroom is (but not in all circumstances) taking the wrong date

Just Shoot Me

Legend

How can the date the image was take be displayed properly on a SCANNED image from a slide or negative. To my knowledge no film camera recorded the date of capture in a digital format that, again to my knowledge, could be read with any scanner on the market and then recorded into the EXIF of the digital file of that slide or negative.

So if the Date of capture is displayed properly in PS Elements then you the user must of set that for all those images.

Why haven't you imported your Elements catalog into the LR catalog?

Abambo

Community Expert

Lr uses the metadata that has been stored with the picture. If the create date is wrong, you can change that in Metadata->Edit Capture Time...

ABAMBO | Hard- and Software Engineer | Photographer

H

hvanderentAuthor

Inspiring

the sheer fact that windows only allows correct dates to be stored in date fields means that a date correctly specified in Elements as e.g. 1943 with month, date and time unknown is recorded in the image as 1-1-1943 00:00. i.e. incorrect information but in a correct format.

so, importing the image into Lightroom provides incorrect information anyway.

i am very disappointed that Lightroom itself does not offer similar functionality to Elements by allowing the user to change 1-1-1943 00:00 into 1943 only and use that info for sequencing etc. .

apparently, in importing images from windows files, Lightroom starts making its own assumptions if it encounters problems with such dates. but than using a different date like the file creation or change dates makes things a lot worse because that information is even more wrong.

and importing via the function "importing the elements catalogue" does not copy information stored in the catalogue but changes it to incorrect information based on a assumption. why doesn't Lightroom enable correct information to be specified by the user. Surely you will agree that pictures belonging to e.g. relatives that have passed away long time ago should still be included in Lightroom with correct information and sequencing ? i now have pictures from e.g. 1918 showing up between images of this century.

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