According to the docs
QuotePreserve the filesystem modification date/time of the original file (FileModifyDate) when writing. Note that some filesystems store a creation date which is not preserved by this option, with the exception of Windows systems where Win32API::File::Time is available. For other systems, the -overwrite_original_in_place option may be used if necessary to preserve the creation date.
I use exiftool.exe on Windows.
When I include
-overwrite_original
-Pin my args file, the
last modified date and time of the file on disk changes. My understanding is that it should not, because of
-P.
Note: I avoid using
-overwrite_original_in_place because it is much slower for large files than overwrite_original.
Odd. I get this (on a Mac, but it should be the same in Windows, using "dir" instead of "ls -l"):
> ls -l a.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 phil staff 2379022 Sep 13 09:15 a.jpg
> exiftool a.jpg -artist=me -P
1 image files updated
> ls -l a.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 phil staff 2379022 Sep 13 09:15 a.jpg
> exiftool a.jpg -artist=me -P -overwrite_original
1 image files updated
> ls -l a.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 phil staff 2379022 Sep 13 09:15 a.jpg
> exiftool a.jpg -artist=me
1 image files updated
> ls -l a.jpg
-rw-r--r-- 1 phil staff 2379022 Sep 13 13:57 a.jpg
- Phil
Hi, Phil
you're right. My error, sorry.
The problem was not caused by the args file I looked at, but by a secondary set of arguments run later to re-import IPTC and EXIF. The second args file did not add the -P parameter when requested.