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

[johnrellis]

@stevej72342657: "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."

Most likely this was due to WhatsApp stripping metadata from photos it allows to be downloaded, a common practice among social-media platforms. The many date/time fields displayed by apps and Mac Finder / Windows File Explorer can be very confusing. I you attach here at a photo freshly downloaded from WhatsApp, I can quickly provide an authoritative explanation of why LR is or is not displaying various date/time fields. 

[stevej72342657]

Hi John,

The thing is if I went into the Properties of a photo downloaded from WhatsApp and then put onto an SD card to Import into LIghtroom Classic, the capture dae was correct in the Properties, but somehow as soon as I Imported that photo, immediatly the date had been changed to that days date. I just get over it now by Keywording the capture date i.e 25th September 2024 and then I add the following, The Date shown in metadata is incorrect. I do that to all my photos now regardless if they came from either of my Nikon cameras, from WhatsApp or off my phone. Its not ideal but just my idea of a workaround!

Kind regards

Steve Jarvis

Sent with [Proton Mail](https://proton.me/mail/home) secure email.

[johnrellis]

"The thing is if I went into the Properties of a photo downloaded from WhatsApp and then put onto an SD card to Import into LIghtroom Classic, the capture dae was correct in the Properties, but somehow as soon as I Imported that photo, immediatly the date had been changed to that days date."

Right, as explained above, WhatsApp is probably stripping the industry-standard capture date from the photo metadata. Without seeing a screenshot of what "Properties" you're referring to, I can't say authoritatively what you're looking at, but you're probably looking at the operating-system file modified / created dates or other dates that aren't the photo capture date.  There many date/times displayed by Mac FInder / Windows File Explorer and other apps, most of which are not "capture date". 

As I explained, we can resolve this authoritatively and quickly determine the most effective workaround if you attach here a photo freshly downloaded from WhatsApp and ALSO a full-resolution screenshot (not a phone pic) of whatever "Properties" you're looking at.

[James331783342ti1]

I am now having the same problem.  However, all of my pictures are being shot on a canon r5 and I then save them to an external hard drive, and when I check the pictures on th drive the time and date are correct.  The problem occures when I edit them in Lightroom classic.  Always 1 or 2 of the pictures time and/or date stamps get changed.  I believe this is an Adobe Bug that needs to be fixed right away.  It is causing chaos in my editing, and until 1 month ago, never happened.

[johnrellis]

"all of my pictures are being shot on a canon r5 and I then save them to an external hard drive, and when I check the pictures on th drive the time and date are correct.  The problem occures when I edit them in Lightroom classic.  Always 1 or 2 of the pictures time and/or date stamps get changed."

1. Are these JPEGs or raws? 

2. Where in LR are you observing the capture date change?  

3. If it's in the Metadata panel, what's the precise label of the field?

4. When the date changes, is it changing to "now" (when you make the edit) or something else? 

5. If something else, what are the before and after date/times?

[James331783342ti1]

Hi Johnrellis, thanks for answering,

I shoot in RAW, edit in RAW, then convert the edited images to JPEG's .   I am observing the date in two places.  First, I can click on any picture prior to importing them into Lightroom Classic and it shows me the date and time the picture was taken.  So I know they start with the correct date/time.  After the pictures have gone through lightroom editing processing and have been converted to JPG through the process, in Windws 11, on my pc, with the latest version of Adobe Lightoom classic, I open the edits folder and select "list" and it will show the pictures in date order.  Thats when I always notice 1 or 2 images at the end of the list with the wrong date and or time listed. And when I right click on the effected pictures, thats I can see that the time/date is wrong as well.  The date is changing to the following day, so its always 1 day after, and that's usually when I am editing it.  I have been using lightroom for the past 10 years, and have never had this problem. 

Why now? 

Why always 1 or 2 pictures out of hundreds? 

And, if to make matters worse, every once and a while I get 1 or 2 croupted images after I upload the JPG images back into lightroom and export them with some coloring effects I use.  The original is not corrupt. 

Until about a month ago, none of this ever happened. I am certian that the pictures go into lightroom uncorrupted, and with the correct date and time stamps.  Something happens after I export the edits I have made.  I have gone back now to try a previous version of Lightroom prior to me having these issues, and will give an update if the problem is gone or persistes.

[James331783342ti1]

Ok, so i went back to a previous version of Adobe Lightroom Classic, 13.5.1 and the problem is gone.  So the problem must be with the current version of Adobe.

[johnrellis]

[This post contains formatting and embedded images that don't appear in email. View the post in your Web browser.]

"After the pictures have gone through lightroom editing processing and have been converted to JPG through the process, in Windws 11, on my pc, with the latest version of Adobe Lightoom classic, I open the edits folder and select "list" and it will show the pictures in date order.  Thats when I always notice 1 or 2 images at the end of the list with the wrong date and or time listed."

There are many different date/time fields, confusingly named and handled by various apps.  To understand what's going on, we must be pedantically precise.

It sounds like you are using Windows File Explorer to view the folder containing the JPEGs exported from LR. You're sorting the view by Date Modified:

The Date Modified field is when the file was last modified by any app. In this case, it will be the date/time of when the file was exported by LR.  Because LR doesn't export files in the exact order they've been selected in LR, the order you see in File Explorer when viewing by date modified won't be the exact order you see in LR.  This is normal, expected behavior that Adobe won't consider a "bug".

You can configure File Explorer to include the Date Take column, which is the capture date/time recorded in EXIF (when the shutter was pressed) and displayed in LR's Metadata panel's Capture Date field:

From your description of the steps you're taking, it doesn't sound like you were displaying Date Taken as a column in File Explorer.

When a photo comes off the camera card, its Date Modified is usually the same (or within a second) of the EXIF capture date, because the file was modified at the same time the shutter was pressed.  But LR's Export makes no attempt to keep Date Modified the same as EXIF capture date.

If this doesn't describe your situation, then we'll need a lot more precise details about what you're doing and seeing to understand what's going on (or going wrong in LR).  Full-resolution screenshots are almost always worthwhile. If there is indeed a LR bug in LR 14 causing what you're seeing, Adobe is very unlikely to act on it without the details necessary to reproduce the problem.