Trouble getting Apple Aperture to read updated date metadata

Started by dgordon, September 16, 2011, 11:04:38 AM

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dgordon

I'm using EXIFTool to 'update' some incorrect timestamps in various files before they are catalouged by Apple's Aperture. I can't work out why Aperture sometimes refuses to see my corrected dates. So using the following
exiftool -overwrite_original '-iptc:TimeCreated= 12:00:00' '-xmp:MetadataDate<$iptc:DateCreated'
'-xmp:CreateDate<$iptc:DateCreated' '-xmp:MetadataDate<$iptc:DateCreated' '-xmp:ModifyDate<$iptc:DateCreated' 

appears to fix all possible date metadata (based on a correct IPTC entry) which I can see from an EXIFTool verbose dump.

So at the moment I have a TIFF file which I've corrected the dates to 2007-04-03. Aperture imports the file and uses the date 2011-09-16 - today's date as the file was saved as a TIFF today. The only place I see today's date is in the IFDO directory
| 16) ModifyDate = 2011:09:16 14:58:44

Either I'm causing my own problem - let me know - or Aperture insists on treating the file creation date as the IPTC date. That would be wrong?

Thanks for any light you can shine

DG

PS Apologies if my cross posting this issue on the Apple support forums causes a problem.

Phil Harvey

I see 2 problems:

1) You should probably be updating EXIF:ModifyDate since this seems to be what Aperture is using.

2) When you update the IPTC you should also update the Photoshop:IPTCDigest with "-iptcdigest=new" if the XMP and IPTC are synchronized.  Otherwise MWG-compliant applications will subsequently ignore the XMP.

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).

dgordon

Thanks Phil, I've added both and that seems to work!

IFDO is EXIF?

I had a workaround of using the touch -t command to change the file creation date. It was working so I assumed Aperture was using that metadata.

Thanks again.

DG

Phil Harvey

Quote from: dgordon on September 16, 2011, 12:52:16 PM
Thanks Phil, I've added both and that seems to work!

Great!

Quote
IFDO is EXIF?

Yes.  IFD0 is a specific Image File Directory used to store EXIF information.

Quote
I had a workaround of using the touch -t command to change the file creation date. It was working so I assumed Aperture was using that metadata.

You may also want to write FileModifyDate with ExifTool if there is a chance that Aperture uses the filesystem modification date/time.

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).