Extreme newbie, need help moving IPTC dates into EXIF dates

[codyknipfer]

Hello all,

Before I get started, I want to put it out there that I have absolutely no coding experience whatsoever... and I struggle even with the very basic stuff. I suppose its thus unfortunate for me that the only way I think I can get done what I want done is through coding. Oh well! To make it easier I've been using the Exiftool GUI.

I'm trying to batch copy the IPTC datecreated field into the Exif modifydate field. I spent 50+ hours of work manually imputing dates into IPTC only to realize that the image hosting site I'm using only uses the Exif date, which is incorrect.

Could someone kindly please provide me a code I could use in the GUI's 'direct' button? It would be an enormous, enormous help and I would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you very much,
Cody

[codyknipfer]

Some more info, should it be of any help.

I've been referencing this thread:

https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php/topic,3413.msg15380.html#msg15380

Which seems to try to solve the same problem. However, when following those steps, I'm getting a number of errors. It tells me there is an error opening file 00:00:00 (so I assume that as the version has changed somehow that time is now being read as a file name/location). It also gives me a "Warning: No writable tags set from <my file name>". I have no clue what that means.

[codyknipfer]

Okay, having played around with it a bit more, I'm able to change all of the EXIF dates using the tool, so I know I'll be able to do what I need in the end.

Problem is, I am not able to get the hour/minute/seconds to transfer into the EXIF fields. As I mentioned in the last post, the command which I had been using from the old thread no longer works.

What this means is that I can transfer my IPTC DateCreated field into one of the Exif date fields, but without any specified hour, minute, and second. This prevents me from then copying this field into the ModifyDate field, which needs a specified time, thereby preventing me from actually solving my problem.

So I guess the real question is: Having moved IPTC datecreated field data into the Exif CreateDate field, how do I then add a time of 00:00:00 to the Exif CreateDate field so that I can then move that to the ModifyDate field?

[Phil Harvey]

The command in the other thread should still work.  There must be something else going wrong.

I'm not sure how to do this via the GUI, but the other thread gives a command for the command-line application that should work:

exiftool "-Exif:CreateDate<$Iptc:DateCreated 00:00:00" DIR

where DIR is the name of the directory containing the images.  Add the -r option to also process images in sub-directories.

If this doesn't work, what messages does it give?

- Phil

[codyknipfer]

Yes, when using the command-prompt this command works fine. I was successfully able to transfer all the dates over. I guess the issue was with the GUI not being able to read some part of the code's syntax, or something. Weird.

Anyway, thank you very much for your help. Your program is absolutely incredible, and has saved me untold amounts of toil.

Cody