Why does Lightroom Classic keep changing the date of my photos on Import

[stevej72342657]

I’m on Adobes Photography Plan and I’m up to date with versions and I’m currently on version 11.4, although this problem has probably happened on the last 6 or so updates.
LRC just changes whatever the date of the shoot was on the photograph and changes it to the date of the import, as you import a batch of photos. I have looked at various `fixes` that have been suggested but none of them work and although you can change roughly the date of the shoot in Metadata, you can’t change the date to the exact date the photo was shot.
When Keywording now, I put the month and day the photo was shot, i.e. April, 17th and on the photos where LRC changes the date and I don’t know the date the photo was taken I also add in `Date shown on this photo is not correct`.
This problem is random though, on a batch import of say 50 photos maybe 40 would have the dates changed.
Any ideas?
Thank you

[AxelMatt]

Please try resetting the preferences of Lightroom Classic:   https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/setting-preferences-lightroom.html

It's recommended to backup your preferences before you reset the preferences to the default settings: 

https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/kb/preference-file-and-other-file-locations.html

[stevej72342657]

Hi Matt,

I tried both of those things many months ago, after that suggestion came from Lightroom Queen support in the UK to whom Im a member, neither of them made any differrence, so having also made a number of other suggestions to me, all of which didnt work, Paul from Lightroom Queen got me to send him my LR catalogue. He then sent that over to someone they knew at Adobe and they ran all their tests on it and it came back there was nothing wrong with the catalogue. I do all my regular housekeeping, I back up every time I exit LRC and once a week, even though I know the back up process doess this I also Optimise my catalogue as well. I should say that this problem exists if I run LRC on my Lenovo desktop PC, or my Dell quite high specced laptop that I purchased last year for the sole purpose of running LRC and PS on it. I believe this is an Adobe bug somewhere,because I cant think of anything Im doing wrong or in fact not doing. Its just so frustrating as its so random and doesnt do it to every imported photo.

[ManiacJoe]

Mac or Windows? Which version of the OS?

Macs does not naturally preserve the file timestamps when files are copied. I am on Windows, so I am not sure if Lightroom takes extra steps to preserve the file timestamps during the import on Macs. The EXIF data inside the files is still correct, right?

[stevej72342657]

Hi ManiacJoe,

Thanks for that and yes I dont make any changes to the EXIF data before importing photos, and this problem occurs randomly to NEF files or JPEG`s generated off my Nikon D500 or D7200, or to JPEG photo files off my old Huawei Mate 20 lite phone or one month old Samsung Galaxy A32 phones. Its frustrating because its so random. But its importent to me to know the exact date photos were taken which is why I`ve reported this as a potential bug. If you look at my comment to Axel Matt above, I`ve had a lot of help from Lightroom Queen in UK trying to resolve this problem. Initially they suggested resetting preferences, but that didnt work, and after other suggestions also didnt work, they got me to send my LRC catalogue over to them and they forwarded it to someone they knew in Adobe Engineering who ran all their tests on my catalogue and the report came back that my catalogue `wasnt corrupted and there was nothing else wrong with the catalogue`. Thats why I`ve now reported this as a potential bug, because I do all my house keeping regularly and back up every time I exit and run Optimisation once a week, even though I know the catalogue is optimised each time you back up. This is just a total mystery now because so many things have been tried.

[stevej72342657]

Hi ManiacJoe, Apologies, I lost a good friend recently and went to the funeral yesterday, Im sill struggling to come to terms with it, but trying to get back to things today as best I can. Anyway I`m on Windows 10

[stevej72342657]

Hi everybody,

This still hasnt solved the problem of why LRC changes date photograph was taken to todays date on Import, does anyone have any further ideas or can someone tell me how I can contact Adobe themselves to report this as a bug? Thank you

[JohanElzenga]

You wrote on June 26 that you reported it as a bug, and that Adobe already tried to find out if there is something wrong with your catalog. So what do you expect from reporting it once again as a bug? I strongly suspect it's something on your system however, not a bug in Lightroom Classic. The reason why I suspect that is simple statistics. If Lightroom Classic had a bug like this, there would be lots of people who already reported it. After all, this would affect pretty much every Lightroom Classic user if it were indeed a bug.

[stevej72342657]

Hi, This is the first time Ive ever used this Adobe thing, so Ive no idea if I have reported this to adobe purely by putting this on here! Do Adobe actually read posts on here, I dont know? I note I got a reply from someone above called Adobe Community Professional, BUT was that actually someone from Adobe `THE COMPANY`, or someone from within this community, I dont know as a newbie on here! Thanks for your patience with a newbie on this platform, maybe this is the reason I dont use things like this. BTW my system has been fully checked by my Computer Shop that Ive been using for over 15 years and a guy who is a photographer and an even bigger Adobe LRC/PS user than me, he couldnt find anything wrong with my system and said he thought it needed reporting to adobe as a potential bug. I take your point about thousands of people reporting a problem, but a problem always starts with that very first report doesnt it, maybe Im the first to report this? Thanks for your answer. I note the Community Guidlines, `be kind and respectful`, I think you could have been a little that way in answering me. Please dont respond to this reply thank you?

[JohanElzenga]

I am going to respond, because you point to the community guidelines and suggest that I somehow was not kind or disrespectful. I fail to see that. You said you already reported this as a bug, and you said you already got help via the Lightroomqueen forums. So the question IMHO is what can we do next to help you solve this, and reporting it again as a bug does not seem to be very useful. But if you are already offended by such a remark, then I agree this should be my last contribution to this thread. I hope you do find a solution.

[GoldingD]

Can you reproduce this behavior today? 

• Take some photos, then copy them to your hard drive. DO NOT IMPORT THEM INTO LrC
• Using Windows File Explorer (Manager) look at the properties, are the dates correct?
• If the dates are correct, import them into LrC via ADD. Inspect.

[stevej72342657]

Hi GoldingD,

I `m now out for the rest of the afternoon, but tomorrow I`ll do exactly as you say, Ill take some photos off my DSLR and some off my camera phone and see if I can reproduce it, but as I said previously its totally random, when it does this. For instance yesterday I imported a folder of 1675 photos from a particular shoot and every single one of them imported correctly with the original shoot date. I`ll get back to you after going through your great fault finding suggestion. Cheers and thanks for your help.

[stevej72342657]

Hi GoldingD,

Apologies,

I was out at two events over the weekend, but yesterday imported into LRC all the many photos I took on both days with my Nikon D500, It imported many hundreds of photos correctly and didnt touch the date at all this time, (I did say it was random). I had already checked on the card before importing them to make sure the date was correct before importing them and it was. Now though this has given me another issue I have never encountered before, because LRC says 192 of the photos on the card `are missing`, so I looked at them again and theyre all there on the card. I even viewed them all in Bridge and theyre there, so I tried importing them again and LRC still says theyre missing. I`ve now imported back in to LRC the back up JPEG copies and will throw away that card just in case its corrupted in some way. When I can duplicate this problem again, I`ll get back to you again.

[GoldingD]

Where are you importing them to?

How are you importing (Copy, Copy as DNG, Add)?

[stevej72342657]

Hi GoldingD, Apologies Ive recently lost a good friend, I went to her funeral yesterday but trying to get back into other things today although still struggling a lot over this. Anyway trying to get back to this. Ive really only ever done it one way. I put in an SD card and choose the default option LRC always offers which is Copy. I have all of my photos on an external HDD and have all my folders by year and then within each year a folder for each shoot or event. When I import however I do so into 3 folders within a folder called Work To Be Done. The 3 sub folders within their are JPEG`s, RAW Files and Videos. Now its at that point where the problem happens and the date gets changed. But after Ive processed the files in the relevant folders I then drag them into their permanent home which is a dated and named shoot folder within the relevant year. Now on occassion, Ive set up this permament folder first and Imported directly into that folder and then done all my edits etc, but if I choose that option the date can still get changed. Now I have managed to duplicate this problem this morning on a batch of 8 photos. One of these of Dartmouth Castle in Devon, was sent to me by a friend. I checked before importing today and within the properties of this photo it says Created: 25th June. Moddifoed 25th June and Accessed 29th June, BUT immediatly upon Import into LRC this morning this photo has had the date on it changed to 8th July 2022! Im going to attach this file exported from LRC just now and the same original file to see if that throws anyy more light on the problem?

[johnrellis]

Those two sample photos look like they've been exported from LR -- they're missing most EXIF metadata.  Can you attach a couple of originals that display the problem?  I'm perhaps the leading expert here on LR's handling of metadata, and it would be good to track down what's happening to you. (Good looking cat, by the way.)

[stevej72342657]

Hi JohnRellis,

I`m not sure how I could do that! The problem is the date is correct on photos on my cards prior to import into LRC and when I view them in Bridge, BUT its only after theyr are imported into LRC that the date of photo is changed to the date there imported, so yes the photos I sent with this post were exported from LRC but thats the only way I know of showing the issue, because as I say the originals are OK, its just during the import process, that some, not all, havec their dates changed to todays date! Ive just put on an answer today to another guy above saying I`d been to two events over this last weekend, I took around 1600 photos and they loaded into LRC without the dates getting changed, except I now have another issue in that LRC said `192 photos are missing`, but theyre there on my card and show up in Bridge and Windows Properties show theyre there, so I tried reimporting them and LRC said that theyre still missing. Ive now reimported the JPEG back ups of these missing photos but got a few hours processing today to make sure I have everything before clearing the cards. As I said above I`m not going to take a chance and will throw that card away in case thats become corrupted.

[johnrellis]

Moving to a new card sounds wise.

Here are some next steps for the capture-date problem:

1. In Library, select one of the photos with date problems, right-click it, and do Show In Explorer.  That will open Explorer with the cataloged photo selected.  Attach that version here.  If the photo is raw, attach both the raw file and it's accompanying .xmp sidecar (if there is one).

2. If you see the problem in the future with a fresh import, do step 1 to attach the copy of the photo just imported.  And then go back to the memory card, find the original the photo on the card, and attach that version here too.

[stevej72342657]

Hi johnrellis, Apologies Ive recently lost a very good friend and went to her funeral yestertday, Im still struggling with this but need to get back into doing other things to try and forget it a bit. A few days ago I Imported some original photos from my D500, on that occassion I didnt have a problem, but this morning Ive imported using Copy 8 photographs that were not my originals into LRC. ONe of these from Dartmouth Castle in Devon, England. was sent to me by a friend. I checked before importing today and within the properties of this photo it says Created: 25th June. Modifoed 25th June and Accessed 29th June, BUT immediatly upon Import into LRC this morning this photo has had the date on it changed to 8th July 2022! Im going to attach this file exported from LRC just now and the same original file to see if that throws anyy more light on the problem? This hhappenned on a photo thats not my original but I have had it happen on photos from either my Nikon D500 or D7200 in the past, but it happens randomly as Ive said previously. BTW Im running Windows 10 on my PC and always have the latest version of LRC on my PC, although I always wait a week or 10 days after a new release to make sure their are no massive bugs being reported on an update. I hope that helps although I have some more of my original photos to import in the next few days and if I can reproduce this problem on the Import of one of my photos, I`ll let you know immedialy. Thanks for your help and support.

[stevej72342657]

Hi Johnrellis,

Sorry very remiss of me and I apologise, I should have said thank you for answering me. 

Kind regards

Steve

[stevej72342657]

Hi Guys can I say thanks to all of you for trying to help with this. In the end by a process of elimination I went through things and narrowed it down to the fact that LRC only seems to change the date on a photograph if its one youve downloaded from WhatsApp. NOw yes I know these photos are low resolution images but if its something a relative has sent you and you have no access to the original, downloading it from WhatsApp is the only choice. Now I`ve checked after downloading such an image and although the capture time is correct in the file properties as soon as you import that JPEG into LRC it changed the date on it and in the metadat panel to `todays date`. I have no idea why it would do that but it does and I suppose I`m just going to have to keep paying my £9.98 for the Photography Plan and put up with it. 

[johnrellis]

Hi Steve, I never received a forum notification of your July 8 reply with the attached photos.  

I examined the metadata from "Dartmout Castle Original.jpg", and it's missing almost all the original camera (EXIF) metadata, including a capture date.  That would be consistent with downloading a photo from social-media apps -- they tend to strip all useful metadata from photos. 

Note that the EXIF capture date is different from the Date Modified and Date Created you see in Windows File Explorer or Mac Finder.  Those are the dates that the operating system or an app created the file or changed it for whatever reason and don't have any necessary relation to the capture date (when the shutter was pressed), which is recorded in EXIF.

LR doesn't handle very well photos that are missing capture dates.  It will use Date Modified or Date Created as a fall-back, but in that case LR does something screwy -- whenever the Date Modified of the file changes, LR will change its displayed capture date to that new Date Modified.  In particular, if you do Metadata > Save Metadata To File, or you have the option Automatically Write Changes Into XMP set, then any time you change keywords, captions, star ratings, etc. or make an edit in Develop, the file's Date Modified changes to "now", and LR will then display that as the new capture date of the photo.

Adobe doesn't acknowledge this as a bug and doesn't really care about it -- it's been this way for years.

A workaround is to select all such photos and do Metadata > Edit Capture Time to set their correct date/time.   After that, LR will handle the photos' capture dates correctly.

[stevej72342657]

Hi John, Many apologies for my late response to your November 15 reply to my little problem, I`ve been away for a few days. Its good to know at least that Adobe are aware of this, its a shame they dont take it that seriuosly to figure out a solution, perhaps I`m the only one moaning about it! LOL. Anyway I often used to import photos into LRC that included my captures direct off one of my Nikon cameras but often in that same Import I`d include a few photos off WhatsApp that my daughter had sent me and of course initially I didnt know where LRC was changing the date, but over many months I got to the point of Importing photos off my Nikons seperatly to any off WhatsApp. I dont like using any of WhatsApp anyway because they are very low resolution images of course, but if thats all I can get to keep a memory of something then thats what I do. I have been going into each off these photos downloaded this way and editing the capture time, which I think is similar or the same as what youve suggested. Anyway, my daughter has some photos to send me later and so I`ll import those and do exactly as you say. Thanks for taking your time to put an answer to my problem its very much appreciated. Steve

[Rodrigo365258619r2f]

Hello everyone,

I'm facing an issue when importing photos from Adobe Cloud to Lightroom Classic. After syncing more than 15,000 photos, now many show an incorrect capture date. Not only are the dates wrong, but the edits have also become inconsistent — vertical photos are now horizontal, many photos look awful as edits seem to apply to the wrong photos. My entire catalog is completely disorganized, and about 25% of the photos are affected.

This is the third time it’s happened this year. Before syncing with Lightroom Classic, everything looked fine across Lightroom Mobile, Web, and Lightroom (non-Classic). The issue only appeared after syncing with Classic, and I’m unable to find a solution.

In the metadata, I can see the original date in some fields, but the capture date often defaults to a random one. Here’s a screenshot to illustrate: in red, you’ll see incorrect dates, while the green shows correct ones.

If anyone has had a similar experience or knows a solution, I’d really appreciate your advice.

Thank you!

[stevej72342657]

Hi Rodrigo,

Ive had a similar thing, but in my case I found it was due to downloading photos sent to me in WhatsApp. I then put them on a memory card and imported them into Lightroom Classic, but the date always showed as the date I imported them and not the capture date that was clearly shown in the properties of each Photo. Im not sure why Lightroom cant just see the capture date in the properties for each photo, but it cant. I asked a question on the forum but nobody every solved this so when I now import photos that originated from WhatsApp, in the keyword panel for that photo I put in `Date shown is not correct`, and the other thing I do to All imprted photos is put in the date the photo was taken i.e 26th September 2024.

Photos imported from an SD card that originated directly from either of my cameras never present a problem, and the day of capture and time are always correct.

I know that doesnt solve your problem, but at least you know youre not alone!

Kind regards

Steve