P: Edit Capture Time issue - Need a way to set all photos selected to same date & time

[Skidoo100]

Edit Capture Time issue - When I select a number of photos and use "Adjust to a specified date and time", rather than all having the specified date & time they are changed but have different dates & time around what was specified. Have not determined pattern, maybe offset from original date.Windows 7 SP1 64bit, Lightroom 5.2

[johnrellis]

Separate topic.

Please reference the new conversation here: Lightroom: Imported video gets capture time from .jpg of same name

[johnrellis]

I think the only way to sort this out is to upload the sample videos, along with any .jpgs in the folder with the same basename, to Dropbox or similar and post the sharing link here. If the issue can be replicated, Adobe may attention.  Otherwise, they're unlikely to pay attention.

[Ganesh GD]

Thanks for reporting a missing feature. A bug has been reported and we will go through the issue.

-Ganesh

[Ganesh GD]

Thanks for reporting a missing feature. A bug has been reported and we will go through the issue.

-Ganesh

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

The lightroom 4 capture adjustment options available are great if you have an actual camera capture time as all photos (though maybe not with the correct date or time) will at least be in chronological order. However, it is not so great when trying to catalog scanned images with only approximate ideas of when the image was captured.

I've been scanning lots of ancient family photos and am using lightroom 4 to catalog them. For most of these photos I only have vague ideas of when they might have been taken. And hardly any were scanned in a chronological order.

To be able to view them by capture time in a relatively chronological order lightroom should allow the following:

A) Incomplete capture times (e.g. if you only know the year and month ... it could be entered e.g. as DD.04.1964 HH:MM:SS) and that way they would be listed either at the beginning or the end of all the april photos of 64)

B) Batch changes of a single entry (i.e. instead of changing the date & time relative to a chosen photo within a selection, change all the photos in that selection to a specific date/time)

[alanterra]

Hi Verena. See my and John Ellis's posts in this thread for ways to set the capture date on historical photos.

Regarding approximate times, it would be nice to have this, but Lightroom needs to be consistent with the available ways to write metadata into photos, and, AFAIK, there is no standard for approximate times. (Just as there also isn't any standard for approximate locations). I use a keyword "± 1 day," "± 1 month;" but I agree that there should be a standard for this. But it isn't just a Lightroom shortcoming.

A

[johnrellis]

Alan, Verena's post is 5 years old.  It was just merged into this topic, and unfortunately the forum software doesn't show the original date!

[alanterra]

If you can delete my comments please do so. I'll try to remember to check the original post before commenting in the future. Thanks for the reminder.

[Curt Wrigley]

YES; please make this work.  It is so frustrating to not be able to set the capture date to what you want for a batch of photos.  I can see the reason for this batch reference date change.  But more often, I want to batch change photos (scans) to the SAME date.  Its frustrating to have to use another vendor tool to just change the date outside of Lightroom.

[johnrellis]

I fully agree that LR should provide an additional option for setting selected photos to all have the same date. As a workaround, you can do this within LR via a third-party plugin -- see this post:
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/edit_capture_time_issue_need_a_way_to_set_all...

[Curt Wrigley]

Frustrating that 2 years of requesting a simple batch date change without rippling; and LR still cant do it!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

One more vote for adding this possibility.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

The current version of Lightroom Classic (v. 9.3) still cannot properly set a batch of image to the same time. Frustrating.

[Califdan2]

Seven years and still waiting.  I don't know if the folks at Adobe don't understand how much time is wasted with scanned images setting the Date/time one image at a time, don't understand the problem, or if they just don't care as it won't sell more subscriptions. 

But however you slice it, adding another option (or actually having the "Adjust to a specific date and time" actually do what the title says) could be anything but a trivial amount of coding.  Maybe Adobe can't imagine how something so simple to code could be that important. 

As said in other threads, It sure would be nice if Adobe Dedicated one release to implementing as many of these long standing, high frustration requests as possible instead of some wizbang feature that few have asked for and fewer will use.   Now, I must say, being able to apply HSL changes locally is one of those long requested ideas that finally made it into the product (albeit not the way most everyone would have expected it to be implemented).  

[alanterra]

Dan, I'm surprised you are wasting so much time setting the Date/Time of images individually when it has been clearly shown here how to do it with the outlay of only €10.00. Maybe your time isn't worth that much?

[Califdan2]

Alan,  Actually have been too busy to get back to my scanning project. And, yes there are 3rd party tools that can manipulate the capture date/time metadata.  However, Adobe Lightroom Classic is promoted as a DAM (Digital Asset Manager) type of application.  In various marketing pieces that have come and gone over the years it has been pushed as a complete solution to managing, organizing and managing images.  So, why it can't do something so simple and which it even says it can do (quote "Adjust to a specific date and time") is missing.

One can also argue that sure  you can get another tool to do this.  And something else to do that, and a third tool to do something else.  At some point it is diminishing returns.  Now don't get me wrong.  I'm all in favor of plugins, and have quite a collection installed, but they are for special purpose functions or functions not all that common for folks to use but something as simple as this, with a broad base of users needing it and that can't possibly be that complicated to do should be included.   

[Califdan2]

I'm think it's time to bring this topic back into the mix of simple to implement and high value, yet ignored by Adobe discussion.  

PROBLEM:
With many folks staying home more and catching up on projects, more and more people are scanning old prints and negatives from their film days.  The problem is that the capture date on these images are the date scanned, not the (many times approximate) date of the original capture.   Even though these images are many times scanned days, weeks, months or even years apart we want all the images for a particular event or shoot to have the same capture date/time.  There is no way to do this In LrC except one image at a time.

PROPOSAL:
In the change capture date/time dialog, add a 4th option that is REALLY a "change all selected images to a specific date time" such that all selected images get the exact date/time typed in.  Change the operation of the current option that has that name to something more indicative of what it really is (eg, adjust dates of selected images by same offset as first image).

[Califdan2]

Meant "change description" (not operation) in last sentence

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Hey there, 

I have been trying to edit the capture to for multiple photos with no success. I tried in grid view while using metadata > change capture time. the time of each picture changes but not to the one I defined even though the 'adjust to a specific data and time' option is checked.. 

[tmickow]

I'm guessing you're running into a common misunderstanding of the "Adjust to a specified date and time" option.  That option actually adjusts multiple images by the same AMOUNT of time.

If you select multiple images, the most selected image will be changed to the date and time you enter and all the other images will be adjusted by the same amount.

For example, if your change added 5 minutes to the most selected image, the time on all the other images would be adjusted to +5 minutes of what they were previously.

Lightroom doesn't have a function to change multiple images to the SAME date and time.

[Califdan2]

Correct. There is no option to actually change all selected images to a specified date./time -- and there should be.  

[tmickow]

Agreed.  Been suggested for years though with no movement as far as I can tell, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Very weird.. seems like a necessary option. isn't there an add on that can help?

thank you for your reply

[tmickow]

I take care of it outside of LrC using ExifTool, myself, but @alan_harper posted instructions on using a plug-in here that might be helpful -

Lightroom: How I set the capture time of a bunch of photos

[Califdan2]

I use GeoSetter outside of LR to set dates.  No matter what tool you use, it it is external to LR (i.e., not a plug in) you should first "save metadata to files" before you use the external tool.  Then "read metadata from files" afterword to get the new dates into the LR catalog. 

Depending on file type, this may create XMP "sidecar" files next to your image files.  After you "read metadata from files" you can delete the XMP sidecar files if you wish.