Copying creation date from one image file to another

[mboursnell]

Hi,

I want to copy the file creation date from one image file onto another.

I am on a M1 iMac, in the Terminal. I am typing:

exiftool -tagsFromFile Test1.jpeg -FileCreate_Date Test1_new_date.jpeg

But the original date of 1966 is copied over as 2102.

What am I doing wrong?

Thanks,

Mike

[wywh]

Do not bother with pre-1970 file dates. Instead, concentrate using internal metadata dates that might be supported down to year 1904-001 depending what app and file format you use.

Unix time begins at 1970 GMT/UTC so Unix timestamp 0 corresponds to Thursday, January 1, 1970 12:00:00 AM GMT.

Usually pre-1970 file dates dates are reverted to some weird date after a reboot.

FileCreateDate 1970:01:01 00:00:00 UTC is the earliest date macOS supports. Some apps might temporarily set it to an earlier date in Finder dates but usually after a reboot it might be changed to some weird future date.

On the other hand, the earliest FileModifyDate seems to be something like 1677:09:21 01:52:33+01:40 (YMMV, the exact time might depend on your location and timezone).

[StarGeek]

I'm assuming you mean -FileCreateDate because otherwise, the command would instantly fail as "FileCreate_Date" isn't a tag.

What version of exiftool are you using?

In the past, there were problems with file dates before 1970, but I thought that was a mainly Windows problem.

On Windows, copying a 1966 FileCreateDate will work correctly with recent versions of exiftool.

And just to verify, you have setfile installed? See the notes under FileCreateDate on the Extra Tags page.

[Phil Harvey]

This is what I get on my MacOS 10.14 system:

Code Select Expand

% exiftool a.jpg -filecreatedate=1966:01:02\ 03:04:05
    1 image files updated
% exiftool a.jpg -filecreatedate
File Creation Date/Time         : 2102:02:08 09:32:21-05:00
So setfile doesn't seem to handle pre-1971 dates as wywh said.

- Phil

[StarGeek]

I found this Apple forum post via Wayback Machine..