I have a bunch of photos that I am trying to update the Date Taken (datetimeoriginal). When viewing the files in Windows explorer, both Date Created and Date Modified are listed, and I want to use those values, but when I display the current values for all the date tags (DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate, ModifyDate, FileCreateDate, FileModifyDate) they are all blank. What's going on here? Is there another tag I am missing?
When you display them where/how?
- Phil
Using ExifToolGUI, in the filelist view, I created a user defined view displaying those tags. I created this view after getting the following error when trying to use the command exiftool "-datetimeoriginal<CreateDate":
======== exiftool
======== ./838173441562746467.jpg
Nothing changed in ./838173441562746467.jpg
0 image files updated
1 image files unchanged
1 files weren't updated due to errors
Warning: Error opening file - exiftool
Error: File not found - exiftool
Warning: No writable tags set from ./838173441562746467.jpg
<-END-
Quote from: rewallac on December 20, 2017, 08:41:07 AM
Warning: Error opening file - exiftool
You shouldn't put "exiftool" in the exiftool-direct command in the GUI.
QuoteWarning: No writable tags set from ./838173441562746467.jpg
This will happen if the file didn't contain a CreateDate tag. I'm guessing that you may want to use FileCreateDate instead.
- Phil
P.S. I'm moving this to the ExifToolGUI section of this forum.
So this has resolved the issue that I was having. Interestingly, I was able to use FileCreateDate, but when displaying the tag in custom view in ExifToolGUI it still shows as blank.
Thanks!
I am still confused why Windows Explorer recognizes the EXIF data differently. Can someone help explain what is happening in the attached photos??
There are filesystem date/time tags and metadata date/time tags with similar names. ExifCapture shows the metadata ones, but explorer probably shows the filesystem ones.
Use this command in ExifTool to see them all, and where they are stored:
exiftool -a -G0:1 -time:all FILE
- Phil
Windows doesn't recognize EXIF data in PNG images. The data shown in your Explorer images are OS timestamps, which exiftool lists as FileModifyDate and FileCreateDate, which are strangely blank in your ExifToolGui image.
Windows will fill the "Date Taken" property with the value of the PNG:CreationTime. That was the only data I found that Windows read in PNG files, but that was under Windows 8 and a couple of years ago (see this thread (https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php/topic,6591.0.html))
Edit: I just double checked and Windows 10 doesn't read any XMP, EXIF, and IPTC data in a PNG image, so no changes in the past couple years. I also realized that I never checked to see if it would read any of the PNG TextualData tags (https://exiftool.org/TagNames/PNG.html#TextualData) but don't expect it will as the Details tab under Windows Properties doesn't show a space for any more data. A quick check by adding four tags (PNG:Artist, PNG:Author, PNG:Comment, and PNG:Copyright) showed nothing in Windows Properties.
Thanks StarGeek, I was able to get Windows to recognize the correct date by setting the PNG:CreationTime. Still a little confused why FileModifyDate and FileCreateDate, are strangely blank in ExifToolGui. Your explanation at least confirmed I wasn't crazy and things are certainly A LOT more complex than I realized.
Having this same issue again. I modified some photos, but seeing strange discrepancies between EXIF and Windows Explorer for the date properties. I used these commands (in this order) for the files:
"-PNG:CreationTime<${filename;$_=substr($_,0,11)} 13:00:00"
"-AllDates<PNG:CreationTime"
"-FileCreateDate<PNG:CreationTime"
"-FileModifyDate<PNG:CreationTime"
Does anyone have any idea why Windows still isn't showing the Date Taken property? Or why EXIF isn't showing anything for FileCreateDate or FileModifyDate??
Quote from: rewallac on August 03, 2018, 04:50:04 PM
Does anyone have any idea why Windows still isn't showing the Date Taken property?
It did at the time of my last post here. It no longer does. The ability to read some PNG data appears to have been removed.
Edit: Strike that, it doesn't read
PNG:CreationTime as written by exiftool any longer. You can set it through Windows Properties->Details and it will show up.
Phil, can you take a look and see what the difference might be. I've attached two small pngs with the creation time set by windows and by exiftool.
Windows is apparently stopping the metadata scan at the PNG IDAT chunk. I have seen this before. This is why the PNGEarlyXMP option exists. Apparently I need to expand this to also cover native PNG metadata. :(
Very unfortunately, metadata may exist after the IDAT chunk according to the specification, and due to this since ExifTool does a single-pass when writing it must wait until it has processed the entire file before writing out any new metadata.
I'll look into expanding the PNGEarlyXMP to also include other metadata types.
- Phil
Any updates to this? Thanks!
No updates yet. Thanks for the reminder, but this will have to wait until after I get back from vacation in a couple of weeks.
- Phil
I can't reproduce this because my version of Windows 10 doesn't show PNG metadata (or at least I can't figure out how to do it -- showing the file "Properties" doesn't give this information). Can you tell me how to get Windows to show this metadata?
I looked into adding the ability to write PNG metadata before iDAT as with XMP and the PNGEarlyXMP option, but this will be a lot of work and may be a while before I am able to implement this.
- Phil
Quote from: Phil Harvey on September 20, 2018, 08:39:59 AM
I can't reproduce this because my version of Windows 10 doesn't show PNG metadata (or at least I can't figure out how to do it -- showing the file "Properties" doesn't give this information). Can you tell me how to get Windows to show this metadata?
Right click properties and then select the "Details" tab.
(https://imgur.com/SFNvVWR.png)
Alternatively, in a directory window, select the View tab and select Details. Then right click at the top of one of the columns and make sure "Date Taken" is checked.
@StarGeek. Thanks. I see the "Date taken" in Windows now.
I'll put this on the list of things to do, but it likely won't get done for a while.
It bugs me when I have to add messy patches to ExifTool to account for quirks in other software. ExifTool writes perfectly valid PNG metadata according to the specification.
- Phil
Any progress on this issue?
Thanks
Ryan
The PNG date issue was fixed back in version 11.13, Oct. 9, 2018 (https://exiftool.org/history.html#v11.13).