Help with dates

[birdbrain]

I am trying to work with files that are truly undated.  Meaning, they are very old and I have no idea when the photo was taken.

Since there is no standard for "undated" or "unknown", I plan to use a metadata template to force the date to be 1/1/1800 (and set a dot to help my workflow).

When I run the template, the date appears in the metadata panel as "1/1/1800 12:00:00AM"...as expected.

I then save the pending edits back to the JPG file.

In Windows File Explorer, all seems well..."Date Taken" is 1/1/1800.  But in IMatch, "Date Subject Created" now shows "Today at 4:32:40 PM".

Any guesses what is going on?

Screen shots of before and after writing the pending changes are attached.

Thank you,

Joe

[jch2103]

That should have worked, unless the metadata didn't actually get written to the image. Given the date/times you show for the second image, it looks like the metadata changes weren't recorded and IM had to guess the time/dates. It definitely works for me (see screenshot).

[Mario]

Usually this just works.

Please repeat your steps and then write-back. Before you write back, open the Output Panel and then check for error messages and warnings emitted by ExifTool after the write-back.

It may also help to attach a sample image (ZIPped) and to run the Metadata Analyst on one of your files to check for metadata-related problems.

[birdbrain]

Mario

I found the answer

Output Panel reported this:

Warning: Invalid date/time (use YYYY:mm:dd HH:MM:SS[.ss][+/-HH:MM|Z]) in ExifIFD:DateTimeOriginal

I could also see errors with the MD Analyst.

The metadata template set "XMP::photoshop\DateCreated" to 1/1/1800.

Once I changed it to 1800:01:01 00:00:01 it worked as expected and no errors in the MD Analyst.

Would be nice if the tool said something when entering the value in the template :-)

Thank you for a "teaching to fish" type of answer.

Joe

[Mario]

Would be nice if the tool said something when entering the value in the template :-)

The Metadata Template has no clue about which data you copy into which tags. You can also copy data in the wrong formats into other tags.
Only ExifTool decides if it can properly convert the data, during write-back.

The importance of using the correct date and time format is explicitly mentioned in the Metadata Template help, including showing an example of the correct format.
If you just want to set the same ate and time for any number of files, you can select all files and just pick the date and time in the Metadata Panel. No template needed at all.

[birdbrain]

Trust me...I fully understand the importance of data quality going in.  (Decades of tech exp, graduate degree in computer science, etc.).

It's the reason I believe computers can and should do the work.  In this case preferably a error or warning when the date is entered...next best is an error or warning when the data is written to the file.  Just proposing as an enhancement or option for your future consideration.  My opinion anyway...maybe we'll have to agree to disagree :-)

I appreciate that the template is not needed, but in this case I am leveraging the power of the templates.  Two reasons: (a) I can be sure the date I chose to indicate "unknown" is entered consistent (no accidentally entering a wrong date) and (b) I also set a red dot to indicate date is estimated for purposes of my workflow.

Thanks again for helping and listening!

Joe

[Mario]

As always, if you want a change to IMatch or a new feature, file a request in the Feature Request board. I always keep an eye on this.

The problem that somebody uses the wrong date format when setting one of the many date and time tags (and some are only date, some are only time, some allow for time-zone offsets, some also/or for sub-seconds, ...) does not really come up that often. I recall maybe two incidents over the past two years (?) and one was yours. I guess not many users use metadata templates to set date and time.

When different users make the same mistake often, I think about ways to improve it. Adding more messages or warnings is always possible, but there are so many messages in IMatch already...

[jch2103]

I think issues of wrong or missing date/time format come up most often with folks who deal with scanned images lacking this information (not usually an issue for cameras and phones, except when corrections are required, such as wrong date/time settings on the device). I usually add this information using a metadata panel (usually for multiple images at once).

The formatting required for hand-entering this is a bit awkward, due to the several parts of the date/time sequence involved. I've thought several times that it would be helpful if there were a 'better' control for adding this information, but I don't have any specific examples to offer. I think that's the major reason I haven't made a request for this feature. And I don't have to add date/time information to images very often (I think I've wrapped up most of my major image scanning projects although I still have several on the horizon).

[Mario]

Tip: the Metadata Panel has a drop-down calendar which allows you to select a date and time:



You can open it from the drop-down menu available for date/time fields in the Metadata Panel.
It does produce the proper format automatically.

When you use literal text or variables to fill metadata tags manually from a Metadata Template, you need to take care that the format is the standard ISO format IMatch/ExifTool use.
This affects only date/time tags.

[jch2103]

Thanks; I think I'd forgotten about that control (and you do have to look closely to find it among the various drop-down options). I think that it helps, but it's still a bit awkward to get to a specific date (although certainly easier than adding individual digits). For example, if I want to add a date/time for July 1, 1887 00:00:00, there's still a fair amount of clicking/mouse wheel movement involved. As I said above, I don't have an example of a better way to do this, but it seems there might be one somewhere. Or not...

[Mario]

This is the standard/official Windows date control.
Do you know that you can just click on the year and "Zoom out", to easily see a decade or even an century?
This way, even entering a 1800th date is just a few clicks: