Alan Harper
New Member
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2016
- Messages
- 23
- Lightroom Experience
- Advanced
- Lightroom Version
Hi
I just spent some time trying to figure out why my scanned photos don't sort by date, and I think I understand it more or less. I searched through this forum to see if this question had been answered before, and I don't think so, although obviously many people understand the issue already.
There are two data fields that store the time that a photo was recorded, as opposed to the time that the digital image was created. These are the IPTC "DateCreated" field and the EXIF "DateTimeOriginal" field.
If you use the "IPTC" metadata panel in Lightroom, you will see a "Date Created" field under IPTC:Image. You can type into this field a date, which should be the date that the image was created (photographed, not scanned). Unfortunately, while you can change this date easily, it doesn't affect how Lightroom sorts and categorizes your images.
If you then bring up the "Edit Capture Time" dialog, you will see the time you just entered as the capture time. If you hit "Change" without changing the data in the dialog, then suddenly the image will sort correctly.
Why is this? It seems that Lightroom sorts by the EXIF "Date Time Original" field if it exists, and by the "Date Time Digitized" if it does not, and ignores the "Date Created" field. When you use the "Edit Capture Time" dialog, the "Date Created" is used as a suggestion for the new value of "Date Time Original", which is then written into the file when the dialog is dismissed.
So the answer is to either
(1) Use the "Edit Capture Time" dialog, which will set both these fields to the same value
(2) Type values into the "Date Time Original" field and then synchronize this data to "Date Time Original" using exiftool (exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal<DateTimeCreated" *.*)
(3) Do the first half of (2), and then get John Beardy's "Capture Time to Exif plugin" to copy the fields.
I don't have this plugin yet, so I can't vouch for it, but I it appears to do exactly what you need here, and many other things as well.
If this is well-known behavior of Lightroom, and I am stating the obvious, just let me know and I'll delete this post.
I just spent some time trying to figure out why my scanned photos don't sort by date, and I think I understand it more or less. I searched through this forum to see if this question had been answered before, and I don't think so, although obviously many people understand the issue already.
There are two data fields that store the time that a photo was recorded, as opposed to the time that the digital image was created. These are the IPTC "DateCreated" field and the EXIF "DateTimeOriginal" field.
If you use the "IPTC" metadata panel in Lightroom, you will see a "Date Created" field under IPTC:Image. You can type into this field a date, which should be the date that the image was created (photographed, not scanned). Unfortunately, while you can change this date easily, it doesn't affect how Lightroom sorts and categorizes your images.
If you then bring up the "Edit Capture Time" dialog, you will see the time you just entered as the capture time. If you hit "Change" without changing the data in the dialog, then suddenly the image will sort correctly.
Why is this? It seems that Lightroom sorts by the EXIF "Date Time Original" field if it exists, and by the "Date Time Digitized" if it does not, and ignores the "Date Created" field. When you use the "Edit Capture Time" dialog, the "Date Created" is used as a suggestion for the new value of "Date Time Original", which is then written into the file when the dialog is dismissed.
So the answer is to either
(1) Use the "Edit Capture Time" dialog, which will set both these fields to the same value
(2) Type values into the "Date Time Original" field and then synchronize this data to "Date Time Original" using exiftool (exiftool "-DateTimeOriginal<DateTimeCreated" *.*)
(3) Do the first half of (2), and then get John Beardy's "Capture Time to Exif plugin" to copy the fields.
I don't have this plugin yet, so I can't vouch for it, but I it appears to do exactly what you need here, and many other things as well.
If this is well-known behavior of Lightroom, and I am stating the obvious, just let me know and I'll delete this post.