ExifTool macOS ObjectName Behavior

[PenguinTool]

I've been using ExifTool extensively for 5 years on macOS for my project to convert 23 years of film photos (which of course have no EXIF information) to digital. I recently decided to add the filename to the IPTC:ObjectName tag to fill the Title field used to sort images in macOS and iOS Photos (I previously filled in the Title field using an AppleScript program). When I do so, however, the IPTC tags DigitalCreationDate and DigitalCreationTime are changed to a seemingly random date and time that I have to restore to complete the EXIF change. This of course slows down the process tremendously, so I was wondering if anyone had ever seen this odd bug and fixed it?

[StarGeek]

Something else is happening. Writing to IPTC:ObjectName will only write to that tag if the IPTC data already exists or write to that tag and create IPTC:ApplicationRecordVersion if the IPTC data is brand new. It will not randomly write to IPTC:DigitalCreationDate/IPTC:DigitalCreationTime.

Are you double-checking the results with exiftool or relying on some other program to read the data?

[PenguinTool]

Thank you for the reply. I'm using only ExifTool to set and check the file EXIF data. I agree it makes no sense to see such behavior, but it's definitely occurring. For what it's worth it only occurs on the new EXIF data I generate for film photos, photos out of a digital camera do not have date/time corruption when I add the IPTC:ObjectName tag. I've been dealing with it using macOS Unix shell scripts to restore corrupted dates/times with ExifTool after I add the ObjectName tag, so I can fix it before sending the photos to macOS/iOS Photos.

[StarGeek]

I would say you need to check your scripts, because it's easy enough to test on the command line to show it doesn't happen by simply writing to IPTC:ObjectName

Code Select Expand

C:\>exiftool -ver
12.93

C:\>exiftool -G1 -a -s -IPTC:all -Time:all y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2023:01:01 00:00:00-08:00
[System]        FileAccessDate                  : 2024:08:27 07:39:56-07:00
[System]        FileCreateDate                  : 2006:10:31 16:37:23-07:00

C:\>exiftool -P -overwrite_original "-IPTC:ObjectName<Filename" y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
    1 image files updated

C:\>exiftool -G1 -a -s -IPTC:all -Time:all y:\!temp\Test4.jpg
[IPTC]          ObjectName                      : Test4.jpg
[IPTC]          ApplicationRecordVersion        : 4
[System]        FileModifyDate                  : 2023:01:01 00:00:00-08:00
[System]        FileAccessDate                  : 2024:08:27 07:40:35-07:00
[System]        FileCreateDate                  : 2006:10:31 16:37:23-07:00