Changing dates

[fredrump]

I use ACDSee as a DB for my pictures. All is well for current photography but trying to import older files gives me problems because they use the Modified Date as the date to place the pictures by date. I wish to use the Date/Time Original created date out of the Exif area and need to move this to the Modified Date place.

Is there a way to do this in a command line for all the images in a directory or directory tree? If there is, who can help me with this. Someone in India suggested batch processing and moving that into each directory which seems sort of cumbersome. I'm showing what the program see as properties for one image out of a directory.   

[StarGeek]

First, you have to figure out what tag ACDSee is reading to fill its "Modified" property.  Use the command in FAQ #3 to see all the data, including duplicates, and the groups they belong to.

My guess would be that the tag you want is the FileModifyDate.  As long as there is a DateTimeOriginal already in the file, then you would use this command
exiftool "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" /path/to/files/

It seems very odd that ACDSee would not be using DateTimeOriginal for a time line.  You might dig a bit to see why it would be using something else, there might be a setting to fix it.

[fredrump]

Thank you so much for your response. Please be so kind and verify your suggestion with the info I was able to dig up from an image using exiftool:
This is what exiftool read from an image example:

File Modification Date/Time     : 2010:06:09 15:12:21-04:00  (#3)
File Access Date/Time           : 2022:12:18 23:01:28-05:00
File Creation Date/Time         : 2014:12:19 16:59:48-05:00

----------------

Modify Date                     : 2010:06:09 15:12:18   (#2)

-----------------

Date/Time Original              : 2010:05:31 12:39:14   (#1)

-----------------

ACDSee uses Modify Date or probably File Modification Date/Time and has no option to use Date/Time Original when importing images from the files on a desktop.  Which means that I would like to move the dates to where they make sense to me for import. #1 to #3 probably makes the most sense.

[fredrump]

exiftool "-FileModifyDate<DateTimeOriginal" /path/to/files/

does this mean a directory tree to the last subdirectory? Like C:/pictures/Saved/Temp1 where Temp1 is the bottom subdirectory in a tree. The actual directory where my files reside is something like this:
Shared Data (\\rumpfileserver) (Z:)/Pictures/2010/2010-05-May/2010 05 31 with all the pictures taken on that day within the directory. Is that what I enter under the above /path... entry?   

[Phil Harvey]

Yes.  But it must be quoted since it contains spaces.  I don't know the proper notation for your shared disk, but you should be able to drag and drop the folder onto the CMD window instead of typing the path.

- Phil