Can you recover a photo’s original camera filename after the JPG has been renamed?
Asked 1/15/2019
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If a photo was originally named by a camera or phone and then renamed later—for example from 20110126_NX003.JPG to sunny_day.JPG—is there any way to determine the original filename from the JPG file alone? I only have the renamed JPG, not the memory card or original folder structure.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
7y ago
2 Answers
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Experimentally I can't find any reference to the file name in the JPG picture files either from my Canon 70D camera or my smartphone.
Not surprising since a filename is just a label on things.
However, pictures from my phone are named using a timestamp:
IMG_20181224_181601856.jpg
And this matches two fields in the EXIF data:
5) DateTimeOriginal = 2018:12:24 18:16:01
6) CreateDate = 2018:12:24 18:16:01
But the last digits (856) don't match other EXIF data:
17) SubSecTime = 918503
18) SubSecTimeOriginal = 918503
19) SubSecTimeDigitized = 918503
So this may not be sufficient to retrieve the full file name, but enough to know at what time the picture was taken, if this is what you wanted the initial filename for.
Whatever your OS, there are many tools around to view EXIF data, this is normally part of any image viewer worth its salt.
Originally by user75947. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user75947
7y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Usually no: the original filename is generally not stored inside the JPG/Exif metadata, so if the file was renamed, the old name is typically lost.
What you often can recover is information that may help you infer it:
- Date/time fields in Exif such as
DateTimeOriginalorCreateDate - On some cameras, a frame/image sequence number stored in maker notes or Exif-like metadata
That means reconstruction may be possible if the device used a predictable naming scheme, such as timestamp-based names on some phones or sequence-number-based names on some cameras. For example, some Nikon cameras store an image number that corresponds to the original filename sequence.
But there is no universal method, and you usually cannot recover the exact original name with certainty from the JPG alone unless the camera metadata happens to include enough matching information.
If your goal is just to identify when the photo was taken, viewing the Exif metadata is often sufficient.
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