exiftool -AllDates silently does nothing

[rm50]

Just downloaded exiftool and it looks like it should do what I need (time-shifting because I'm an idiot and forgot to set the TZ on my camera). But when I try the example from the man page on a sample directory with one jpg file in it (exiftool -AllDates-='0:0:0 1:30:0' .), I just get

    1 directories scanned
    0 image files updated
    1 image files unchanged

Am I doing something obvious wrong? If not, how can I figure out what went wrong?

(MacOS 14.7.1, M1 chip, exiftool 13.21)

[StarGeek]

AllDates is a shortcut for the three most common EXIF timestamps, CreateDate, DateTimeOriginal, and ModifyDate.

That response most likely indicates that the tags covered by the AllDates shortcut don't exist in the file.

Run this command on the file. It will show you all the time stamps in the file and you can then figure out which ones you need to change.
exiftool -time:all -G1 -a -s file.jpg

[rm50]

Thanks. That was exactly the problem. Lousy test case.

In the files I actually want to modify, I have the following EXIF:

Code Select Expand

[IFD0]         ModifyDate                      : 2025:02:21 13:45:32
[XMP-xmp]      CreateDate                      : 2025:02:21 13:45:32.42
[ExifIFD]      DateTimeOriginal                : 2025:02:21 13:45:32
[ExifIFD]      CreateDate                      : 2025:02:21 13:45:32
[Nikon]        TimeZone                        : +02:00
[Nikon]        DaylightSavings                 : Yes
[Nikon]        DateDisplayFormat               : M/D/Y
[Nikon]        PowerUpTime                     : 0000:00:00 00:00:00
[ExifIFD]      SubSecTime                      : 42
[ExifIFD]      SubSecTimeOriginal              : 42
[ExifIFD]      SubSecTimeDigitized             : 42
[IFD0]         DateTimeOriginal                : 2025:02:21 13:45:32
[Composite]    SubSecCreateDate                : 2025:02:21 13:45:32.42
[Composite]    SubSecDateTimeOriginal          : 2025:02:21 13:45:32.42
[Composite]    SubSecModifyDate                : 2025:02:21 13:45:32.42
I want to modify the creation time so that it shows up (in my image editing application, which is Luminar) and in Flickr, as three hours earlier. The [Nikon] settings presumably come from my camera, but how many of the others do I need to modify, and do I need to/how do I specify which categories I want to change? (I had no idea that there were so many times...)

[StarGeek]

Sorry, the command I listed suppressed the file system time stamps, which might be important. I've edited the original command, so you might try that one.

You can ignore the Nikon time stamps. Those are part of the MakerNotes and very few programs will read them. You can also ignore the Composite tags, as those don't actually exist in the file (see the details at the top of the Composite tags page).

Your original command would be correct and would modify all the relevant tags except for one. There is a duplicate DateTimeOriginal in the IFD0 subgroup (IFD# and ExifIFD are subgroups of the EXIF group). This is non-standard, as the normal place is ExifIFD. I was about to say that it won't update, but that no longer seems to be the case.

If you want, you can remove it with this
exiftool -ifd0:DateTimeOriginal= file.jpg

[rm50]

Thanks for the help. That all worked great.