Panasonic PHOTOfunSTUDIO 9.5 Windows 10 wont show images after ExifTool updates

[njwcat7]

I have a Panasonic FZ1000 camera and about 1500 images with the wrong date from a recent holiday because I didn't change the camera date correctly and forgot to check it after I'd taken a few photos

I've noticed that after using exiftool to modify the dates using -Alldates that the images no longer show up in PHOTOfunSTUDIO 9.5 PE Ver9.05 L752 on Windows 10.

Its not a huge problem as the images do appear correctly in Windows File Explorer and Lightroom (permanent licence version 6) also is able to import them, but I do find pfstudio handy sometimes when doing quick views and initial filtering / organising images etc as part of an initial scan through.

As a control I put two copies of the same image in a new folder and ran exiftool -AllDates-=8:00 against one of the two image copies, then opened this folder in photofunstudio. The original version of the image appeared but not the updated one. (exiftool version is 12.67)

I also dumped the exif data from the original and modified images to a text file and compared them. Apart from the obvious date differences, the only other differences I can find are related to the thumbnail and raw offsets and the jpg from raw (see below) so it seems that there is something about the updated image that pfstudio doesnt like


Original
Thumbnail Offset                : 35328
Jpg From Raw                    : (Binary data 230912 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Raw Data Offset                 : 235008

Updated
Thumbnail Offset                : 30886
Jpg From Raw                    : (Binary data 212220 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Raw Data Offset                 : 215892

Is there a known fix for this ? Its more of an inconvenience than a major problem for me so its not a big deal if it cant be resolved easily

[StarGeek]

Can you make a before and after image available in case Phil needs some samples to compare?

The fact that other programs are reading the data indicates that there probably is a bug in PHOTOfunSTUDIO.  Have you tried looking at other jpegs in it?  Also, it looks like the current version of PHOTOfunSTUDIO is 10.1 (link).

[njwcat7]

Thanks, but it seems that Panasonic have different versions of their software for different camera models.

Their download site insists on an 11-digit product/serial code from the base of the camera and none of the download pages for newer versions of pfs will accept the code on mine so it looks like I'm stuck with it.

Its not a major problem and probably isn't worth Phil's time as other photo software including Lightroom, Digikam and even Windows Explorer all seem to work with the updated .rw2 files

[StarGeek]

Thanks, but it seems that Panasonic have different versions of their software for different camera models.

I thought that might be a possibility.  Other camera companies do similar things with their software.  It's a real pain sometimes.

[Phil Harvey]

StarGeek is correct.  We've seen this before.

It appears that manufacturers often contract out their software to 3rd parties, and it is in the best interests of these companies to make the software as inflexible as possible to generate more business when anything changes with the original file structure.  This is my current theory as to why they are less concerned about reading the file properly.

I've added a note about this in the Known Problems section of the ExifTool home page.

- Phil