P: Add proper UTC offset support when changing image time

[trevor98712893]

Right now, you can only change the time of an image. But this does not revise the timezone UTC metadata.

Lightroom needs the ability to change the time zone data, as there are many times where the time is correct but the time zone was offset.

exif:OffsetTimeOriginal/EXIF:OffsetTimeDigitized/EXIF:OffsetTime

 
Some apps, such as Apple Photos, uses the utc offset when organizing images. This means exports from Lightroom would be out of order - not great. 

[Will5s5]

This!

Much of the pain to manage Time in pictures came from the absence of these OffsetTime* fields before EXIF 2.31. But it has been 8 years now...

It would be so much nicer if LrC considered the absolute timestamps (i.e., Time* + OffsetTime*) from the EXIF metadata, or at least gave the option to.

Beyond the necessary compatibility with others tools that now consider these fields, it also means you can go on vacation and forget to update the timezone, or forget to put your Daylight Saving Time, or configure your camera time in GMT and ever forget it... and it woudn't matter, the absolute time would still be right.

And based on this absolute timestamp, you could still easily display the local time by giving the location (country or GPS coordinates).

[johnrellis]

I agree that using absolute time would be superior. 

However, I very much doubt that Adobe will ever invest the effort necessary to implement the necessary changes, including UI changes needed to display the time zone and commands for manipulating time zone separate from manipulating hours/minutes/seconds. It may seem simple, but being experienced with LR's metadata handling and internals, I think the assumption that all date/time fields are relative and not specific to a time zone pervades LR's implementation, and thus the changes would be very expensive to get right.

After all these years, LR still can't correctly handle photos missing metadata capture dates, despite a couple attempts to fix the bugs.

When Adobe introduced the LR cloud ecosystem six years ago, they also announced that they would focus their priorities for Lightroom Classic on Develop and image quality. They've been true to their word.

[trevor98712893]

Adobe is the market leader in this area, and Lightroom (not classic) is still not a great product for people that need the fine details. If the very basic Photos app on the iPhone can change the Time Zone metadata, then really Adobes software should be able to as well. We are all not perfect and forget to change cameras time zones, but LRC makes it impossible to resolve in a way that also is cohesive with other image managment apps. Don't forget we also pay monthly for the privilege to use LRC, and with recurring costs come higher expectations.

[kernald]

While it's easy to change the capture date of a photo/video, the timezone isn't surfaced anywhere, nor is there any way to change it. This feels like a glaring oversight, that's easy enough to fix on the exported JPGs with exiftool, but not really should be something we could change in Lightroom itself.