Help please... From filename to exif datecreated

[pacomadrid_6]

Hi folks! I am a new user to this incredibly powerful tool... After much reading, investigating and trying, I decided to ask for help to advanced users to see if I can sort out my issue: I digitized all the pictures of my family and I have got now a directory with aprox 9.000 pictures. I patiently renamed all files in windows with this format : "yyyy-mm-dd hh-mm-ss coment.jpg" and I would like to use the file name "yyyy-mm-dd hh-mm-ss" to write the exif field "datecreated" so that the pictures I scanned are showing the right date I used in the filename and not the exif datecreated field my scanner included.

For example, I scanned in November a pict of my kid´s birthday and named it "2008-12-11 12-00-00 Birthday.jpg" but the exifdatecreated shows "2014-11-12 21-15-23" wich is the date I scanned it.

What would be the instruction for chaging the exif date with the file name date?

Your help is very much appreciatted!

Regards, Paco

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Paco,

First you must figure out the name of the ExifTool tag that you want to write.  I suspect that you want the EXIF:DateTimeOriginal tag (which should be when the picture was actually taken).  If so, then the command is:

exiftool "-exif:datetimeoriginal<filename" DIR

where DIR is the name of a directory containing the images.   Add -r to the command to also process subdirectories.

See the EXIF tags documentation for a complete list of available EXIF tags.

- Phil

[pacomadrid_6]

Thanks Phil!

You are right, tag is EXIF:DateTimeOriginal. That is close to what I am trying to do, great thanks for your help. Please let me take one more minute from you:

The command is close, but my problem is that the filenames of my 9K picts are following this naming template: "YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS followed by a descriptive, and then the extension. Example:

"2014-11-01 12-15-24 Birthday at the park.jpg"
"1984-02-26 01-25-14 Dinner at Italian.jpg"

How can I tell Exiftool to use only the YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS characters of the filename and write only that in EXIF:DateTimeOriginal?

Thank you very much for your support with this "mistery"...

KR, Paco

[StarGeek]

How can I tell Exiftool to use only the YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS characters of the filename and write only that in EXIF:DateTimeOriginal?

You don't need to, ExifTool will figure it out.  See FAQ 5.

[pacomadrid_6]

Thank you Folks. Problem solved!

Now the cloud service I use is categorizing the pictures right by date they were created and not by the date they were scanned.

Gracias and Merry Xmas.