How do I make Windows use the correct photo date when the camera date is stored in PictureInfo instead of EXIF?

Asked 7/5/2021

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Some older JPEGs show the wrong Date Taken in Windows and other apps. The correct capture date appears in ExifTool under APP12::PictureInfo\TimeDate\DateTimeOriginal\0, but copying it to the file system creation date did not fix what Windows displays.

I tried: exiftool "-FileCreateDate<DateTimeOriginal" -r \1999\*.jpg

Is FileCreateDate the value Windows uses for Date Taken, or do I need to copy the timestamp into a different metadata field?

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

5y ago

2 Answers

2

That DateTimeOriginal tag is located in an extremely old and outdated group, not in the EXIF data. Windows wouldn't know how to read the APP14 PictureInfo group and I doubt that there are many programs outside of exiftool and maybe exiv2 that would even be able to see that data.

The command you would want to use with exiftool to copy that data to the EXIF timestamps would be
exiftool "-AllDates<PictureInfo:DateTimeOriginal" /path/to/files/

Originally by user37960. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user37960

5y ago

0

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

FileCreateDate is a file-system timestamp, not the normal photo metadata field Windows uses for Date Taken.

In your files, the correct date is stored in an old PictureInfo block rather than standard EXIF, so Windows likely ignores it. To make Windows and most photo software recognize the capture date, copy that value into the standard EXIF date fields instead.

Use ExifTool to write the date into the common EXIF timestamps:

exiftool "-AllDates<PictureInfo:DateTimeOriginal" /path/to/files

AllDates writes the three usual EXIF date tags:

  • DateTimeOriginal
  • CreateDate
  • ModifyDate

That should make the date visible to Windows and other programs that read standard EXIF metadata. If needed, keep a backup before batch-writing metadata.

UniqueBot

AI

5y ago

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