You have to trash a viewer that would not keep the exif data! And mainly the exif date taken 
And fortunately Irfanview like the viewers I listed above do keep the exif data.
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Thank you Steven, 
You understood it might not be images from a camera having the issue. That meant a lot.
Yes, I donāt have a problem with JPGās from the camera.
Itās my digital art that has the problem as a lot of it didnāt have the IPTC or EXIF data entered yet as I was still trying to get the original created dates that disappeared when I got that computer.
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Hi Todd,
Thank you for those links.
Iāll probably do a trial run of a couple of those programs to see if they will fit my situation.
Thank you.
Hi Susan,
Does it keep the original dates from non JPG images?
My digital art doesnāt have EXIF or IPTC automatically entered like a camera JPG does.
Thank you for that info.
I hadnāt realized there were so many Date Columns available in File Explorer.
Currently that doesnāt solve my problem because all of the Date Created say the date they were put onto this computer, which isnāt helpful as they mostly say now they were created in 2022, which is certainly not the case.
And since most of my images are not JPGās they donāt have EXIF or IPTC data attached as I was still working on this problem from my last computer.
I find it interesting that the computer doesnāt lose the original created date so much for documents.
Hi Jorismak,
Thank you for that info.
I hadnāt realized there were so many Date Columns available in File Explorer.
Unfortunately these images didnāt have metadata (IPTC or EXIF) as I was still working on determining their correct dates as the same thing happened with my last computer.
Then I found that the Photos app showed their real original created dates and was able to start entering their EXIF and IPTC info. That is until MS updated the Photos app and it quit doing that.
I use ACDSee but it shows the date imported onto this computer as the created date. Once I have the date and enter it into the EXIF and IPTC fields then ACDSee will show those as the created date etc.
Thank you,
As others have said, the date created is not what you want. The date modified is more relevant to you.
Actually, the Date Created is exactly what I want. I very rarely alter an existing image. I will alter it and do a Save As and change the name.
Copyright is about the date you created an image and thatās what I need.
I canāt prove copyright when the computer says it was created in 2022 when I really created it in 2005.
If you copy a file to a new file using xcopy or copy or robocopy, the new file is created ānowā. But the ādate modifiedā of the new file will inherit from the original file.
If you havenāt modified a file, its ādate modifiedā will be the date it was first created.
Hi Alan,
About 3 computers ago, that happened and I didnāt know why the modified date was kept, but it was the original created date. Thank you for your explanation of why that was. 
However, I have a folder of over 200 images I created in 2017 but except for two of them they all have 2022 dates for both the created and the modified dates in the date colums.
I included the year created in many of my file names because this happened on the last computer too, so for those I at least know the year they were created.
I am dealing with bmp, png, tiff, pdn, pfi, mix, rtg and other file formats.
My jpg images from my camera have their EXIF and IPTC data which includes their created date. But I have at least 10,000 images so this is a real issue for me and I need to find a solution.
I mentioned three copying methods that will set the ādate createdā to now. But other programs can do whatever they want, such as inheriting the creation date of the new file from the old file. In Powershell, we can set a creation date like this:
(Get-Item "x.bin").CreationTime=("01 February 2012 12:34:56")
I expect a Powershell script could be written that set the creation dates of all files from the EXIF date.
Thank you for this info Alan.
Part of the problem is these images do not have EXIF data.
If you want a creation date to reliably accompany a file you need to either 1) add the tag EXIF:DateTimeOriginal with the proper date value to the fileās metadata, or 2) incorporate the creation date/time into the filename itself.
exiftool can aid you in doing either of these:
Itās a command line program, and there are GUI shells available for it. Of note to your specific need, thereās also an EXIF:Copyright tag available for you to insert your copyright assertion.
The operating system file date/times do not behave to the rules we photographers cherishā¦
Iām still confused what you done to get exif data awayā¦ arenāt it RAW files ? Those should always have it , and i know of nothing that thinks itās a good idea to remove it.
Maybe some exiftool tricks can be good for you ?
Like taking the filesystem date and putting it into exif in one of the fields .
Or the other way around , making sure the filesystem modified and/created date is set to the photo-taken field in exif.
Or, matching up original raw files by filename and copying missing exif data from those into jpg files that donāt have it . Etcā¦
I know the commandline can be scary , but it can be a great help if you need to fix things in 1000s of images.
Or at least try a tool or GUI to help you with this, donāt go entering date indo one by one :).
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Hi Jorismak,
No, they arenāt RAW files, nor are they JPG files. These are not images taken from a camera.
You know when you create a new document - say a Word or Excel document - you donāt have to add EXIF or IPTC dates because the file system creates them for you? When I make digital art the file system creates the dates for it.
But when a computer crashes and they are brought into the new computer, the new computer says the created date, the modified date and the imported dates are all 2022 (for this computer because the manufacturer rebuilt it and when I brought my images in from Dropbox all the dates were changed to the new date of 2022.
I used to use the Photos app to view them because it showed the original real created and modified dates. But theyāve changed the Photos app and now it shows the 2022 dates too.
I use ACDSee where I can put the EXIF and IPTC data, but I need the data before I can do that. This is the third computer Iām dealing with this and thought Iād see if anyone knew where the real original date was hidden.
It seems there isnāt any good answers though, so I will just have cross reference all the info I have and questimate the created dates for many of them.
Youāre right the command line is scary. I am looking at the EXIF tools that were mentioned as they arenāt software dependent and that might work well for me once Iāve put in as many dates as I can.
Thank you for your help and understanding. Have a great day!
For me it looks like the filesystem is not sufficient enough for your use case. Iād rather go for a decent asset management software instead of relying on the filesystem and some tools without an integrated workflow.
Digikam should fit all you needs, it can sort and order files by metadata (such as the date an image has been taken) and you donāt have to worry about dates when a file has been changed or transferred to another computer.
https://www.digikam.org/
Got itā¦ unfortunately I donāt have any good ideas 
. I see youāve had a lot of suggestions though, so good luck!
Of you have an app now that āsomehowā shows the date you are looking forā¦ Chances are good that exiftool can read it as well ā¦ And if exiftool can read it, it can write it back to the filesystem date in a batch.
Might be an idea to just download āexiftool guiā or something , drag a file in it and see if it can detect the date you are interested in.
@Colorworks: Do you really need the exact date for copyright reasons? Given current laws, Iād say being able to prove you are the creator is more important. If you manage that, you have no particular reason to claim a date in the past as creation date. But Iām not a lawyer, nor do I have any formal law trainingā¦
If you really need the creation year, your best bet might be to check the old hard disk(s), if they are still readable (you didnāt say why the computer crashed).
For new works, and general storage, perhaps a NAS with multiple disks in a RAID configuration is what you need. Ideally coupled with an off-site backup, and perhaps a version control system like Git. Those allow you to follow the history of an image as well.
But if you are a professional graphics artist, Iād suggest you discuss the issues with an IT professional competent in this area. He should be able to explain the technical issues and costs related to the various possible solutions. While there are very competent people here, this is foremost a photography forumā¦
Depending on the file format, you can insert metadata tags if theyāre not there. I took your list of formats from the previous post and looked them up in the exiftool documentation:
- bmp: No appropriate tag in their limited metadata
- png: exiftool can write a EXIF:DateTimeOriginal to it
- tiff: exiftool can write a EXIF:DateTimeOriginal to it
- pdn: No such format in the exiftool list
- pfi: No such format in the exiftool list. There are some pf* extensions, associated with fontsā¦ ??
- mix: No such format in the exiftool list
- rtg: No such format in the exiftool list.
Given the mixed results above, Iād recommend putting the creation date-time in the filename. A lot of people do this; exiftool has a whole section in their documentation on how to do this:
https://exiftool.org/exiftool_pod.html#RENAMING-EXAMPLES
I know the command line can be a bit scary, but if you make a test directory of a few images and try some of the examples in it first, you can gain confidence in meeting your specific need as well as formulate the particular command you need.
Hope this helpsā¦