Is there any software which will set the EXIF Dates based on the file's modification date?

Question

I have been using Exifer for many years to re-date and re-name my photos based on the EXIF dates from the camera(s).

I have now started using some alternative camera apps available on the iPhone (specifically Plastiq Camera and Hipstamatic) but these do not save any EXIF information in the images.

What I would like to do then is to insert the Date Digitised, Date Taken and Date Modified EXIF values based on the JPG file's Modified Date (which is correct to the time of taking the photo) and to also set the Make to Apple and Model to iPhone 3GS (although the process would apply to any JPG image which has no EXIF data, regardless of the source)

I have looked at Exifer, IrfanView, ExifTool, Picasa and others and they either cannot set the dates at all or can only set them to a specific date/time.

So, is there any software available which will automatically set the EXIF Dates based on the file's Modified date property?

Or, is there some switch in ExifTool that I have missed possibly?

I would like to be able to do this as a batch on a folder of images.

EDIT: Following John's answer, this is the Windows .bat file I created to do this. The order of commands is important so as not to overwrite any of the dates with other commands.

"D:\Program Files\ExifTool\exiftool.exe" "-FileModifyDate>AllDates" *
"D:\Program Files\ExifTool\exiftool.exe" "-Make=Apple" *
"D:\Program Files\ExifTool\exiftool.exe" "-Model=iPhone 3GS" *
"D:\Program Files\ExifTool\exiftool.exe" "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" *Pause

Asked by Shevek

Answer

I think you can do it with ExifTool:

exiftool -v "-FileModifyDate>DateTimeOriginal" *

Tried on some copies of jpegs and it seems to have worked.

Answered by John Cavan

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Where are in camera ratings on the Canon 5D MkIII stored?

Question

The Canon 5D MkIII introduced a new featured that lets you rate images by using a dedicated rear button. I am interested in finding out where in the EXIF data that this rating is stored. I wasn't aware of any metadata field that ratings were typically stored in, so I'm not sure what they would be using.

You can read about the feature on page 255 of the manual. The manual notes that:

With Windows Vista and Windows 7, you can see each files rating as part of the file information display or in the provided image viewer.

Asked by dpollitt

Answer

Sadly I don't have a 5DmkIII but I've managed to figure it out with a bit of detective work.

The answer is that it's stored in an XMP header as the <xmp:Rating> value.

I started by hunting down a Canon 5DmkIII group on Flickr and found this thread. Click on one of those photos then go to the metadata page and you'll see one of the values listed is Rating (in this case with a value of 3). I'm certain that value hasn't come from post-processing because the metadata also shows it was processed in Lightroom 4. I use a 5DmkII and Lightroom 4, and rate all my photos before uploading to Flickr, and yet my photos don't have a Rating value on their metadata page.

Unfortunately all the photos I checked in that group have download disabled, so I headed over to dpreview.com's gallery of 5DmkIII test shots where I found this test image:

If you click that to go through to dpreview.com you'll see one of the tags on the photo is pre-production. Seeing that, and knowing dpreview.com's usual approach, it's pretty certain this image is straight out of camera.

So, I got the URL of the original image and posted it into Jeffrey's Exif Viewer. And there it is, right in the XMP section:

<?xpacket begin='' id='W5M0MpCehiHzreSzNTczkc9d'?>
<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/">
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">
<rdf:Description rdf:about="" xmlns:xmp="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/">
<xmp:Rating>0</xmp:Rating>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>
</x:xmpmeta> 
<?xpacket end='w'?>

Also note there's no Software value in the metadata anywhere: a further indication that this is straight from camera.

Finally, just to be absolutely sure, I took a straight-from-camera JPEG from my 5DmkII and ran that past Jeffrey's Exif Viewer. Sure enough, no rating value.

Answered by Mark Whitaker

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What tools exist to remove metadata from photos?

Question

Whenever I share my photographs, I also share lots of information that I do not want to pass on:

• specific camera model that the photo was taken with
• exposure time
• focal ratio
• ...

How can I remove all those metadata for sharing?

I'm particularly looking for solutions for Max OS X.

Asked by gentmatt

Answer

nconvert is a fantastic tool to convert and manipulate images. It is available for a huge number of platforms in cluding Mac OS X and some plaforms I thought were long gone :)

To wipe all metadata you have to use the rmeta option, as in:

nconvert -rmeta DSCN0001.JPG

There is a small catch with all such operations depending on your camera. When you take photos in portrait orientation (the long side being vertical), some cameras create a JPEG with the rotated dimensions and others simply flag the jpeg as being rotated. In the latter case, removing all metadata will make all images appear in landscape orientation. nconvert provides an easy fix for this:

nconvert -jpegtrans exif DSCN0001.JPG

...which you have to do before removing the metadata but you can combine into one operation as in:

nconvert -jpegtrans exif -rmeta DSCN0001.JPG

PS: If you use Lightroom to export your images before publication and enable the option Minimize embdeded metadata, your images will be correctly oriented and stripped of metadata except for copyright information which is something you may want to keep embedded anyways.

Answered by Itai

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How to find all photos taken in April - any April?

Question

I have 100+ gB of photos going back 25 years. They are arranged in a directory tree by category, with nested sub-directories.

How can I make a search for all photos taken in a given month, say April, in any of those directories?

I don't think that a Windows search will work as that will probably be the file creation data, which could be a month or two later wen I finally more the files from SD card to PC.

Perhaps searching the EXIF data? Is there a free program which can do that?

Asked by Mawg

Answer

Certainly if you have EXIF tags on your photos, either those written by your digital camera, or those you may have added manual to older photos, this is the way to go. "exiftool" is reliable and supports all of the various formats and tags.

For instance, the following command, prints out the creation date of all image files found underneath the 2010 directory.

 exiftool -r -csv -s -t -EXIF:CreateDate 2010

Output looks like this:-

2010/11/13/IMG_4266.JPG,2010:11:13 16:51:25
2010/11/13/IMG_4268.JPG,2010:11:13 16:52:12
2010/11/09/IMG_4234.JPG,2010:11:09 19:08:04
...
2010/10/15/IMG_4301.JPG,2010:10:15 20:51:54
2010/10/15/IMG_4302.JPG,2010:10:15 20:52:08
2010/10/15/IMG_4305.JPG,2010:10:15 21:01:06
2010/10/15/IMG_4299.JPG,2010:10:15 20:38:58
   49 directories scanned
  625 image files read

You can then use this information to search for files in the dates you are interested in. I believe there is also a graphical version of exiftool for Windows (exiftoolGUI) which might be more friendly to use.

Answered by martyvis

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What is Interoperability Index R98?

Question

In the uploaded pictures from my mobile phone, I get a line with the following information: Interoperability Index = R98? What is this Index?

Asked by 2134464321

Answer

Quote from www.exif.org/dcf.PDF (Design rule for Camera File system):

With the rapidly growing popularity of digital still cameras, there are increasing demands for file interchangeability, which will allow images captured on one camera to be viewed on another, or output directly to a printer. ExifR98 is a set of compatibility recommendations designed to meet such needs, by strictly defining the range of Exif application, and by setting out detailed rules for recording and playing image files not specified in the Exif format.

Basically it's a set of rules for the file names, directory structure and mandatory meta-data for digital camera so that all compatible viewers and printer will be able to read the memory cards of all compatible cameras.

All cameras that are compatible with ExifR98 are required to add the interoperability index tag to the EXIF data with the value "R98" (among other things).

Answered by Nir

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Why can't I view an edited image on my camera?

Question

This question is an extension of How can I copy images to my camera for viewing?.

When I take a picture on my camera, edit it on my computer, and send it back to my camera, my camera cannot display the image. Why is this so?

This applies to many makes and models of cameras and appears to be related to the Exif data in the image file. Why does the camera need to be picky about the Exif data in the image? Is there a technical reason the Exif structures need to be in a certain format?

Asked by DragonLord

Answer

It depends on the camera but on the ones I tried it only partially works.

In particular my Fuji F300EXR shows the image with a 'Gift' icon, complete with ribbons :) and show the preview but zoom in or EXIF display is not possible.

The Sony I had (Don't remember the model HX-something) did not even like me renaming its own photos without modification! In this case there were plenty of non-image files and directories created by the camera, so I assume the camera has an index of photos, maybe even with the previews cached separately somewhere.

Some cameras do not like different EXIF but some use other data to index the card and if you put a photo that does not match, then is it simply not seen.

Answered by Zak

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Can I “lock” copyright metadata in an image?

Question

I'm going to be distributing some of my images as TIFF files and want to put my copyright and contact information into the metadata for the images in a way that prevents it being stripped or altered by third parties. At the moment I'm using Photoshop CS5 and inserting the information using Bridge. Is there a method for locking the metadata that anyone can recommend?

Asked by Danny Edmunds

Answer

Anyone with an editor can open a TIFF and save it again without the metadata. I don't think there is any way to lock the metadata from being stripped out.

You could look at digital watermarking, such as Digimarc

Answered by MikeW

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Is it possible for Lightroom to automatically add keywords on import?

Question

Specifically, I'm looking to automatically add keywords relating to EXIF data, like the camera that the picture was taken with.

The reason I am interested in doing this is because some of the places that I publish to automatically strip the meta-data, but leave the keywords intact. I'd like for the information to remain associated with the image, if possible.

Asked by ninesided

Answer

Yes to your title question. No to the one related to EXIF data.

You can specify on import any number of static keywords but, without a third-party plugin, there does not seem to be a way to create keywords dynamically.

What puzzles me is why would you want to add keywords from the EXIF since that would only duplicate information. Lightroom is equally capable of searching and indexing keywords and EXIF information. In the filter bar, for example, if you use 'All Searchable Fields' then LR will match keywords and EXIF for anything you type there.

Answered by Itai

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What are the technical camera specs for the HTC Wildfire S?

Question

I am trying to do some CGI manipulations on pictures I've taken. In order to fake reality with some 3D object inserted in the picture, I need some information to configure my virtual camera so it can match my real one.

The problem is that I'm using the camera of my Smartphone, which is a HTC Wildfire S. There are no specs concerning the camera in the manual nor on the Internet.

I need to find out the focal length and the width of CCD sensor (and maybe some other things I might be asked by the CGI software later on). Is there a good and simple way to find these?

Asked by Oltarus

Answer

• Focal length: 3.5mm
• ISO: 75
• Aperture: f/2.2 ?
• Sensor is probably 1/6" 2.4mm x 1.8mm
• Resolution: 2592x1944

Answered by MikeW

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Software to display statistics based on EXIF data?

Question

I'm interested in learning what the photo settings i use the most often (eg. what focal length, what ISO etc.) to possibly help with deciding what lens to get in the future. Is there any software (or a simple script) that will enumerate all my photos and produce a report based on EXIF data? Something that will for example list the number of photos for taken at each ISO setting or (possibly more useful) a lsit of how many photos at each focal length.

Asked by mundeep

Answer

Maybe this could help you : http://www.cpr.demon.nl/prog_plotf.html . It's (ExposurePlot) a Windows freeware.

I hadn't tested it but according to his description it allow to

generates statistical graphs for exposure information, contained in the EXIF data of digital photos. It analyzes focal length, ISO, aperture (F-Stop) and shutter speed and generates graphs that display the percentage used, times used and combinations of these values

Answered by maxmouchet

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How to find out the original size of a photo?

Question

Follow-up from What's the max size a photo can be enlarge based on size while preserving the same quality?

Asked by designparadise

Answer

For a digital image, the size of the is always embedded in the metadata. This means that you can view the original size of an image in the original image.

If you have is a resized image, then the EXIF contains the new size and, unfortunately, the original size has been lost. The EXIF information may still contain the model of the camera which took the image though. This will let you find the maximum possible size of the original image, even though the camera may have been set to shoot at a lower resolution.

Answered by Itai

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What methods can be tested to see what was likely the original size?

Question

Without the original image or exif info or knowing who took the photo :)

followup from How to find out the original size of a photo?

Asked by designparadise

Answer

The most accurate, and by far the easiest, method would be to simply ask the person who took the photo.

If you don't think the photo has been cropped, you can try to figure out the class of camera from the aspect ratio (e.g. DSLRs often have a 3:2 aspect ratio and compact cameras often have a 4:3 aspect ratio).

Based on the contents of the picture, you can try to narrow down when the picture was taken, and from that you can narrow down the list of cameras to those that were available at that date (so if a building in the picture was demolished in 2007, the picture couldn't have been taken with a camera released in 2009).

Using clues like the depth of field in the image, you might be able to determine what class of camera was used: an ultra-narrow depth of field might imply an interchangeable-lens camera with a very fast lens.

With information you have about the photographer, you might be able to infer some things about the camera that was used (for example a fisheye image taken by someone on an extremely-limited budget was probably either constructed in post-processing or taken with a fisheye adapter on a cheap camera, rather than a fisheye lens on a full-frame DSLR).

Artifacts in the image may help you determine if or how much the image was post-processed, and whether or not the post-processing will affect the accuracy of the assumptions you are making.

The larger the image is, the more information you'll be able to recover (like trying to guess the sensor size from the image quality). If the image you're working from is very small, just a couple hundred pixels across, you won't have much information left to work from.

Answered by drewbenn

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Is it possible to embed a clickable url in an image? [closed]

Question

Is it in any way possible to add URLs or hyperlinks to photos? It's for adding to a web page. I know there is an image map option. But is it possible using any tool to directly add it to the image?

Asked by zapping

Answer

If I understand the question, you want embedded in your image a clickable URL. ChrisF and Mike have explained how to provide links in HTML, but what you are after is something permanently embedded in your image. Even an image map is an HTML construct that isn't permanently embedded in your image.

Adobe Flash and PDF files can contain clickable URLs if you want to do some work. PDF isn't ideal as it isn't universally accepted, and even Flash isn't available on all platforms.

I think you're best to rely on people see your website URL and typing it in themselves, unless you can ask web masters to link your images back to your site for you.

Answered by MikeW

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Does embedding an ICC profile into an image actually embed the entirety of that profile into an image?

Question

This is very much a imaging question, but Photography looked like the best site to ask.

I've been reading information about ICC, color spaces, JPEG metadata, and the like trying to understand this.

When an application 'embeds' a color/ICC profile into an image, like a JPEG, does that actually embed the entire ICC Profile? If I saved a photo with the sRGB or Adobe RGB color profiles embedded, does that mean color-aware applications will:

1. Open the image
2. Extract the profile data (i.e. it sees the image is AdobeRGB)
3. Apply transformations on the color using the information from the profile
4. Display the image

My confusion comes from inspecting a bunch of photos I have - I viewed their metadata with exiftool, and this snippet of information came out:

Color Space                     : sRGB
Profile CMM Type                : Lino
Profile Version                 : 2.1.0
Profile Class                   : Display Device Profile
Color Space Data                : RGB
CMM Flags                       : Not Embedded, Independent <--- does anything use this?
Device Manufacturer             : IEC
Device Model                    : sRGB
Device Attributes               : Reflective, Glossy, Positive, Color
Rendering Intent                : Perceptual
Connection Space Illuminant     : 0.9642 1 0.82491
Profile Description             : sRGB IEC61966-2.1
Device Mfg Desc                 : IEC http://www.iec.ch
Device Model Desc               : IEC 61966-2.1 Default RGB colour space - sRGB

So this photo has an sRGB profile, that's fine. But what is the CMM Flags field for and does anyone use it?

The ICC standard, in section 7.2.11, says the CMM field data indicates this this:

The profile flags field shall contain flags to indicate various hints for the CMM such as distributed processing and caching options

Position 0 - Embedded profile (0 if not embedded, 1 if embedded in file)

Position 1 - Profile cannot be used independently of the embedded color data

---

So condensed to a couple related questions:

1. Does embedding an ICC profile into an image actually embed the entirety of that profile into an image? Or does it only serve to tell color-aware applications to look for that profile in the system (i.e. Windows' ICC directory)

2. Am I just confused and the CMM Flags are independent of the notion of embedding an ICC profile?

Thanks, I hope my question is clear enough.

Asked by birryree

Answer

The CMM Flags field is referring to Color Management Module flags. In this case, its saying that the ICC profile the JPEG image is tagged with is not embedded. It is possible, although not required, to embed ICC profiles within images, including JPEG images (as according to the very document you linked:)

B.4 Embedding ICC profiles in JPEG files

The JPEG standard (ISO/IEC 10918-1[2]) supports application specific data segments. These segments may be used for tagging images with ICC profiles. The APP2 marker is used to introduce the ICC profile tag. Given that there are only 15 supported APP markers, there is a chance of many applications using the same marker. ICC tags are thus identified by beginning the data with a special null terminated byte sequence, “ICC_PROFILE”.

The length field of a JPEG marker is only two bytes long; the length of the length field is included in the total. Hence, the values 0 and 1 are not legal lengths. This would limit the maximum data length to 65 533. The identification sequence would lower this even further. As it is quite possible for an ICC profile to be longer than this, a mechanism is required to break the profile into chunks and place each chunk in a separate marker. A mechanism to identify each chunk in sequence order is therefore necessary.

The identifier sequence is followed by one byte indicating the sequence number of the chunk (counting starts at 1) and one byte indicating the total number of chunks. All chunks in the sequence should indicate the same total number of chunks. The 1-byte chunk count limits the size of embeddable profiles to 16 707 345 bytes.

Generally speaking, I think images are usually only tagged with ICC profiles, rather than having them embedded, when associated with sRGB, AdobeRGB, or one of the other very common color spaces. It may be necessary to embed a profile if it is a custom profile, one that you do not expect to exist on the machines the image will generally be viewed on.

Answered by jrista

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Is it possible to set the year instead of a complete creation date in a JPEG?

Question

I use iPhoto to manage my pictures. Unfortunately I have many pictures from the 80s. These pictures are actually slides that I have scanned in during 2008. So my problem is that the creation date of all these pictures is set to the date when I scanned it in. Now I want to set the real date of these pictures. Unfortunately I don't know the exact date, but at least the year.

So is there any function available to only set the year field of a date without a specific date?

I asked this question here, because the problem is not Mac-specific, but a general problem.

Answer

The EXIF specification for JPEG metadata says:

The date and time of image creation. In this standard it is the date and time the file was changed. The format is "YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS" with time shown in 24-hour format, and the date and time separated by one blank character [20.H]. When the date and time are unknown, all the character spaces except colons (":") may be filled with blank characters, or else the Interoperability field may be filled with blank characters. The character string length is 20 bytes including NULL for termination. When the field is left blank, it is treated as unknown.

Which allows for entirely unknown dates, but doesn't have a standard for less-precise dates. You could fill unknown portions with spaces, but I'm not sure which software will let you do that, and more importantly, which software will react badly to reading that, since the standard does not explicitly give that as an option.

I think you have two basic choices:

• Option 1: Guess. Based on the subject matter, put in your best guesses for the date and time.
• Option 2: Chose a clearly-arbitrary value like midnight on January 1st of the appropriate year — YYYY:01:01 00:00:00. When someone looks later, they probably won't think that the pictures were all from some wild New Year party.

The latter can be combined into the former. When I know the day but not the time, I usually set the time to noon: 12:00:00, because this avoids (a large degree of) time-zone ambiguity. (Another unfortunate lack in the EXIF standard.)

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Is there a film scanner that can read the data from APS films and include it in the EXIF metadata?

Question

I've a bunch of APS films that I'd like to scan but all the film scanners I've seen on the market today are 35mm scanners; and whilst some have little carriers to allow you to physically scan APS, none seem to exist that read the metadata or even at the very least motor drive and automate the scanning?

Is there a product I've missed, that might be found on the likes of eBay; or would I be better off getting them scanned at my local friendly photolab?

Answer

Well, I've searched for this for a good long while. It took some real search foo, but I eventually found the terms that seem to produce a few god results: APS Film Magnetic Strip Reader.

It seems there is only one product that can be found that can read the magnetic strip on APS film that contains the EXIF metadata. Its the Nikon Coolscan IV APS Film Adapter, a discontinued product that does not seem to be available from any commercial storefront on the internet. I did a search on eBay for Nikon Coolscan, and there seem to be quite a few things, including APS specific gear. The APS Film Adapter was not listed when I did my searches, however its eBay, so you never know.

From what I can tell, the Coolscan scanners and the film adapters seem to be pretty expensive...as in, the $2000-$3000 range. Not exactly consumer-level gear. Most of the information I was able to find (which included the links from @nik, as well as several other similar sites and forums) seemed to indicate that the advanced features of APS film never really took off, and the magnetic strip that contained the metadata was never really effectively used. Seems like that is partly due to the downfall of APS as a film format (couldn't tell you why it really failed, never knew much about it.)

There was one other product that I found, the Fuji Frontier Minilab, that seems to be able to scan APS film. A lot of information seems to indicate that it can read the magnetic strip and extract the EXIF data from it, however I couldn't find anything that actually confirmed that. Sadly, it is a commercial product, rather huge, and probably far outside of any individuals price range. You might try taking your APS film to a shop that uses the Fuji Minilab, and see if their scans include the EXIF metadata. Beyond that, I couldn't find anything else relating to scanning APS film and including the EXIF in the resulting digital images.

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Exif aperture larger than possible for the used lens

Question

A photo shot with an 1:1.8 lens contains the following exif data:

ApertureValue: 1695994/1000000  
MaxApertureValue: 16/10

How is this possible? Both values are <1.8

Answer

I have seen that exact value (16/10) on a Nikon before. It may just be an incorrect value as Matt says. It could also be a calculated value adjusted for:

• focus distance info from the lens, which affects the apparent aperture
• adjustment for low ISO (i.e L.03 or L.07)
• adjustment for exposure compensation
• FX lens on a DX body

For example if you had ISO set on Nikon to L.03 the EXIF data might report ISO 200 and the aperture open a stop wider than it can actually go.

If you can share more information about which camera and lens, and other EXIF data we might be able to make a better guess, but the main point is you can't completely trust EXIF data.

You can also get different results using different EXIF readers. What reader are you using, and what value is reported by your processing software (Lightroom or Aperture or whatever)?

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Is it possible to sync title and description from Flickr to Lightroom?

Question

I wonder if I can sync metadata such as title and description from Flickr to LR without using any third party software, just with built in Flickr Plugin. If so, how can I do it?

Answer

This is not possible in LR 3.6 unfortunately.

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D7000 HD video format - can each frame contain metadata?

Question

In fact the question is the other way round:

I shoot a HD video with my Nikon-D7000, and along the way things happen, such as I change zoom, focal length, light levels change such that the D7000 adjusts its sensitivity during the recording...

Is all this data available for reading somewhere, and if yes how?

I could not find the information on regular websites (Nikon's, www.imaging-resource.com, general google search).

I tried exiftool, but it seems to only show general metadata that is true for the overall video recording.

So is this data recorded somewhere, and can I read it on my Linux system?

Any answer or hint appreciated.

Answer

No. Standard video formats do not work like that and the D7000 is no exception to this. Conceivably it can be done but I am sure it is not on anyone's priority list. I worked for 9 years on video processing and rendering software and there are more important problems to solve. Indexing and managing that data would also become a problem. When working on functions that process video from a series of still images, it makes it vastly simpler to assume the metadata of the first frame applies to all subsequent ones.

Obviously I understand why it would be desirable but this is the same on all cameras. GPS is another perfect example. On cameras with built-in GPS, only the location of at the time video recording starts is recorded while you may be shooting from a moving vehicle and cover some ground while recording.

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How can I export EXIF metadata from Apple Aperture?

Question

I'm trying to export the EXIF metadata from my photo archives so that I can do some analysis of which focal lengths I use the most. Aperture has a "File --> Export --> Metadata..." option, but that seems to only include IPTC metadata and not EXIF info.

Is there any way to export the EXIF metadata to a text file?

Answer

It turns out that Automator has an Aperture "Extract Metadata" action that has access to all of the EXIF fields.

I was able to solve my problem using a simple Automator workflow that performs the following steps:

1. (Aperture) Get selected items
2. (Aperture) Extract Metadata -- With the option for "Tabbed Text" output.
3. (Text) New Text Document

I have uploaded the Automator workflow as Extract Focal Length.workflow for reference. This workflow took about 30-minutes to run on 10,000 images, but at least I got the data I needed out.

One note, be sure to collapse the steps so that the results aren't displayed in Automator if you are running this on many items as this will slow it down dramatically.

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