Warning: No writable tags set

[Tya]

Hello! I'm on a Mac (OS10.15.5) and have exported my photos off icloud to my laptop. Since Apple has the issue of changing all the dates to the date added, I modified the creation date to the actual date/time I captured the photos by using:

exiftool '-FileModifyDate<datetimeoriginal' DIR

out of 6000+ photos, this worked for 5000+ of them, but I have 1000+ that retained the wrong dates with

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Warning: No writable tags set from [i]FILE[/i] messages. I then tried to see if there're any tags I could make use of (I'm not sure this was the right thing to do, I was just trying my luck at this point) via:

exiftool -a -s -G FILE

However, unlike when I tried this command on photos that were successful (which brought up much longer lists of information), none of the info showed up included the original capture date, e.g. for a photo taken in 2019:

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[ExifTool]      ExifToolVersion                 : 11.99
[File]          FileName                        : 4514.jpeg
[File]          Directory                       : /Users/tya/Desktop/Photos
[File]          FileSize                        : 231 kB
[File]          FileModifyDate                  : 2020:06:04 09:12:25+08:00
[File]          FileAccessDate                  : 2020:06:05 20:48:02+08:00
[File]          FileInodeChangeDate             : 2020:06:05 20:47:55+08:00
[File]          FilePermissions                 : rw-------
[File]          FileType                        : JPEG
[File]          FileTypeExtension               : jpg
[File]          MIMEType                        : image/jpeg
[File]          ImageWidth                      : 1600
[File]          ImageHeight                     : 903
[File]          EncodingProcess                 : Progressive DCT, Huffman coding
[File]          BitsPerSample                   : 8
[File]          ColorComponents                 : 3
[File]          YCbCrSubSampling                : YCbCr4:2:0 (2 2)
[JFIF]          JFIFVersion                     : 1.01
[JFIF]          ResolutionUnit                  : None
[JFIF]          XResolution                     : 1
[JFIF]          YResolution                     : 1
[Composite]     ImageSize                       : 1600x903
[Composite]     Megapixels                      : 1.4

I'm not very familiar with commands so this might be a silly question. But hope to have some advice on how I can change the creation date of these 1000+ photos. Thank you!:)

[StarGeek]

The file example you show doesn't have any time stamps except for the file system ones.  There's no DateTimeOriginal tag to copy from which is why you get that error.

You'll have to figure out what to set the date with from some other source.

[Tya]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I'm not sure what you mean by other sources. As in if I can find the original photo file to extract the DateTimeOriginal tag?
I only have the original photos on iCloud, and those files were the result from exporting them as unmodified originals onto my MacBook. The date and time reflected in icloud itself is correct, is there any other ways I can extract that information out in order to fix them for the photo files? and how do I go about doing that?

Sorry if these are super basic questions! Finding out about exiftool and figuring it out has been a big help, but it's my first time working with command lines so I'm still very unfamiliar in this territory.

[StarGeek]

I'm not sure what you mean by other sources. As in if I can find the original photo file to extract the DateTimeOriginal tag?

I don't have any experience with iCloud, so I don't know where it got it's data.  But if it exports the files unmodified, then there won't be a DateTimeOriginal in that file either.  It might be possible that the date on the iCloud image was taken from the FileCreateDate/FileModifyDate when it was originally uploaded.

The date and time reflected in icloud itself is correct, is there any other ways I can extract that information out in order to fix them for the photo files?

I would have no idea.  You may have to fix them manually if there isn't a setting in the export to keep the date.

A quick google search came up with this post, no idea if it is helpful or not.

[Tya]

oh dear I see, okay. How do I manually change them then? Is it by adding necessary tags? or is there something I need to modify for each of these files?

Could you give me an example of a command I can use to fix each of them individually?

Regarding the post, thanks! The way I exported the photo was the same as what it suggested (ie. unmodified original), which is probably why I could extract the original date and time for most photos from its metadata, in order to fix the file date and time displayed in the folder. I'm just lost as to what happened to the 1000+ photos that it didn't work for.

[StarGeek]

The basic command would
exiftool -AllDates='2020:06:07 16:00:00' -FileModifyDate='2020:06:07 16:00:00' /path/to/file
changing the time stamp as needed.

But you might find it easier to use something like Adobe Bridge, which is free.  It will give you an easy gui to look through and set individual items.  You could then set the DateTimeOriginal on this part of the metadata section


Then you could use your original command to set the FileModifyDate.