Scanned photos upload to iphoto with correct date, but "no date" in Amazon Photo

[jbruce05495]

I am trying to upload images scanned from negatives using Vuescan.  I can upload the same image to iPhoto and it uses the "content created" date that I set when scanning in Vuescan, but when I upload to Amazon Photos it shows "no date".  (see attachment one)

I then used exiftool to add  the modifydate and the offset time fields and the file still shows "no date" when uploaded to Amazon Photos.  (see attachment two)

Since I knew I could add photos from my iPhone (after importing to iPhoto and then dragging to the desktop) to Amazon photos with the correct date, I tried a brute force approach of using an image file that came from my iPhone (iphoto1.jpeg) to add to my Vuescan original (V-1984-Jul-0002.jpg).

exiftool -tagsFromFile iphoto1.jpeg V-1984-Jul-0001.jpg 

This did not work, so then I deleted the tags  from the vuescan file, and then copied the tags from the iphoto file.

exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile iphoto1.jpeg -exif:all V-1984-Jul-0002.jpg
Warning: ICC_Profile deleted. Image colors may be affected - V-1984-Jul-0002.jpg
    1 image files updated


(the output from this is shown in attachment three)

This last command was successful in getting Amazon Photos to display the content created date correctly (though it was the content created date for the iPhone image instead of the Vuescan image so I would need another step to copy the originaldate from the vuescan file) however image was rotated 180 degrees (explained by the addition of a orientation field) It also deleted ICC_Profile information, which I was concerned might be an issue. 

When I compare attachment three to one and two I notice a change from little-endian to Big-endian, as well as the addition of some [composite] date fields, but really have no idea why Amazon correctly reads the content created date correctly in one case and not the other

I am hoping there is a simpler way ...

[Phil Harvey]

In the first case you copied all tags to their preferred locations.

In the second case (as well as deleting all metadata beforehand) you copied only EXIF tags to their preferred EXIF locations.

Was it deleting all the metadata, or copying only the EXIF tags that made the difference?

If the EXIF byte order makes a difference, then Vuescan has some serious issues.  You can test this too by re-doing the 2nd command and adding a -exifbyteorder=little to force a specified byte order when rebuilding the EXIF.

- Phil

[jbruce05495]

After comparing the exif output from various files that worked and did not, I discovered the problem turned put to be the presence of the EXIF:PageName tag in scanned negative files. 

After Deleting that tag I could upload to amazon photos and it recognized the content created date correctly.  I have no idea why Amazon Photos was unable to detect the date correctly when that tag was present but I guess I don't really care...


exiftool -exif:pagename= .

(I deleted that tag from all files in the directory)

thanks for your help! 

[Phil Harvey]

I couldn't have predicted that.

The wild world of metadata keeps us on our toes!

- Phil