Hi Jorismak,
No, they aren’t 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 don’t 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 they’ve 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 I’m dealing with this and thought I’d see if anyone knew where the real original date was hidden.
It seems there isn’t 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.
You’re right the command line is scary. I am looking at the EXIF tools that were mentioned as they aren’t software dependent and that might work well for me once I’ve 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. I’d 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 don’t have to worry about dates when a file has been changed or transferred to another computer. https://www.digikam.org/
Of you have an app now that ‘somehow’ shows the date you are looking for… Chances are good that exiftool can read it as well … 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 ‘exiftool gui’ 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, I’d 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 I’m not a lawyer, nor do I have any formal law training…
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 didn’t 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, I’d 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 forum…
Depending on the file format, you can insert metadata tags if they’re 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 fonts… ??
mix: No such format in the exiftool list
rtg: No such format in the exiftool list.
Given the mixed results above, I’d 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:
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.
. I see you’ve had a lot of suggestions though, so good luck!