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no capture/creation date in metadata in certain photos

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Stephanie Booth

Active Member
Joined
Mar 21, 2018
Messages
108
Location
Lausanne, Switzerland
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic 9.4
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.15 Catalina
I'm trying to clean up a friend's old LR catalog before migrating everything to LR Cloudy. When we first tried simply importing the original photos to Cloudy we realised that many photos had "lost" their creation date somewhere in the move. So I've gone back to the original LR catalog (upgraded the LR 5 catalog to look at it with my set-up) and noticed that the photos that seem to have "lost" their date don't have any exif or "date created" under "Image" in the metadata pane.

How can I fix this? LR clearly things they have a capture time, because I can see it when I filter the photos by date or look at the information in the grid view. but clearly that information does not seem to live in the photo file (anymore?).
 
Here's some additional info. The two photos on the right have the "date missing" problem. I just noticed that the first one's date seemed to have changed to today. I think I did "save metadata to file" on it. But it's still in the 2014 filter. What is going on?
Screenshot 2020-09-20 at 22.03.57.png
 
This inconsistency in capture dates is usually triggered by a LR bug when importing photos that didn't have industry-standard capture dates recorded in their metadata. Before migrating the photos to Cloudy (either by importing them directly or by using the Cloud migration tool), you'll need to get LR 5 to have consistent dates in its catalog.

To get consistent dates:

1. Backup the catalog!!!

2. Select one of the problem photos, do Metadata > Edit Capture Time and observe what appears in Corrected Time. Change Corrected Time if necessary. Click Change. At that point, the catalog will have consistent capture dates, and what appears above the thumbnail should match the Filter bar and what appears in the Metadata panel.

3. Repeat step 2 on more problem photos. If it's the case that the Corrected Time that shows in Edit Capture Time is always correct, then you can select many photos at once, do Metadata > Edit Capture Time, and click Change All. No, that won't change them all to the same date -- it will change them all individually to what would appear in their Correct Time fields, so they're all consistent.

But if it's the case that sometimes the Corrected Time that appears in Edit Capture Time isn't correct and you have to change it manually, then you'll have to manually correct each photo separately.

4. When all of the photos have been corrected, select them all and do Metadata > Save Metadata To File.
 
Oh thanks! that is super helpful. Hadn't thought of using Edit Capture Time to simply "write" the capture time. I just checked, and the first photo is wrong, but not the second. I'll get a previous version of the catalog and see if it gets rid of the consequences of my "write metadata to file" moves.

One question: in the Edit Capture Time dialogue, which "adjustment type" do I use? Does it matter?

Oh, and another question: I'm not sure how to go around identifying the "problem photos". From the previous migration fiasco I know there are around 20k of them, but how would I go about trying to "filter" them? Or do I just apply the Edit Capture Time "hack" to all the photos in the catalog?
 
One question: in the Edit Capture Time dialogue, which "adjustment type" do I use?
Use Adjust To A Specified Date And Time (that's the default when the dialog first opens). It does matter.
 
I'm not sure how to go around identifying the "problem photos". From the previous migration fiasco I know there are around 20k of them, but how would I go about trying to "filter" them? Or do I just apply the Edit Capture Time "hack" to all the photos in the catalog?
I don't know of a consistent way of identifying them, other than by sorting grid view by capture date and then manually scanning the dates shown above each thumbnail.

I'd only do the Edit Capture Time workaround if you're confident that it retains the correct date all of the time. E.g. do 50 individual photos that you know are wrong, do Edit Capture Time on each separately, and verify that the resulting date shown on the thumbnail and in the Metadata panel are correct. If they all are correct (you don't need to do any manual correction), then it's reasonably safe to select all the photos in the catalog (or groups of 1000 at a time) and do them as a batch. (But make sure you have a catalog backup.)
 
So, by hunting around, I have found many photos here and there who have a "displayed" date and time which is different from the "pragmatic" date and time (the one lightroom uses to sort by capture date or filter by date). This is quite a problem, because it seems the "real" date is the one that lightroom is using and not displaying, and when I do the Edit Capture Time workaround, it uses the displayed date.

Looks like I am quite stuck with this issue... any other ideas?
 
So, actually, I think it's not so bad. Those other photos with "bad dates" are actually photos taken between midnight and 1am (we're in GMT +1 here). So they just get a 1h shift, and it might even be putting them back on the right time.

I'm going to gingerly do a few more experiments with the Edit Capture Time workaround.


Screenshot 2020-09-21 at 11.50.36.png
 
I have found many photos here and there who have a "displayed" date and time which is different from the "pragmatic" date and time (the one lightroom uses to sort by capture date or filter by date). This is quite a problem, because it seems the "real" date is the one that lightroom is using and not displaying, and when I do the Edit Capture Time workaround, it uses the displayed date.
That is precisely the inconsistency of the bug: There are multiple dates stored internally in the catalog, and different parts of LR use different dates.

Unfortunately, the only known workaround is to do Edit Capture Time and change Corrected Time if needed before clicking Change.
 
Those other photos with "bad dates" are actually photos taken between midnight and 1am (we're in GMT +1 here). So they just get a 1h shift
That shift is usually caused by importing from the camera using a USB cable, which gets the time zone wrong (another very old bug Adobe has declined to fix).
 
Thanks again! I took the plunge and edited capture time on all photos, and it's solved the problem sufficiently for me to be able to move forward in the great migration project :)
 
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