We’ve all done it… Daylight Savings Time changes, or you go on vacation abroad, and you forget to change the time stamp on the camera. It’s not a problem though, as Lightroom makes it very simple to correct the capture time. We’ll do this using Lightroom Classic first, then Lightroom (cloud-based) desktop.
Lightroom Classic – fix date and time
- First, make sure you’re in Grid view so that your changes apply to all selected photos.
- Find a photo for which you know the correct time and note that time down—we’ll call this the ‘known time’ photo for the moment.
- Select all of the photos that need the time stamp changed by the same amount.
- Click on the thumbnail of the ‘known-time’ photo that we identified in step 2, making that photo the active (most-selected) photo without deselecting the other photos.
- Go to Metadata menu > Edit Capture Time to show the Edit Capture Time dialog. The preview photo on the left should be your ‘known time’ photo.
- If you need to change the time by full hours, you can select Shift by set number of hours and enter the time difference, but otherwise, choose the first option, Adjust to a specified date and time, as this allows you to change by years, months, days, hours, minutes or seconds.
- If you’ve selected the Adjust to a specified date and time option, enter the correct time—the time you noted down earlier for the ‘known-time’ photo. You can select each number (hours, minutes, etc.) individually, and change the value either using the arrows or by typing the time of your choice.
- Click Change All to update all of the selected photos.
While not entirely obvious, when changing the time stamp on a series of photos, the active (most-selected) photo will be set to the time you enter in step 7, and the rest of the photos will be adjusted by the same incremental time difference. It won’t set them all to the same date and time, and that applies whether your active (most-selected) photo is the first in the series or not. For example, if you’ve selected 3 photos and you set the correct time for the middle one to 16:26, that photo will be the ‘known-time’ photo identified in step 2, and the others will be adjusted by the same time difference.
So you would have:
If you make a mistake, the original time stamp is stored in the catalog until the photo is removed, and you can return to that original time stamp by using Metadata menu > Revert Capture Time to Original.
The updated capture time is stored in the catalog, and if you write to the files using Ctrl-S (Windows) / Cmd-S (Mac), it will be written to the metadata of the file too. For proprietary raw files, most other metadata is written to an XMP sidecar file, however the updated capture time can be written back to the raw file itself.
Writing to the file shouldn’t cause any problems, as it’s written to a known portion of the metadata file header and doesn’t affect the raw image data itself. However it’s a point of concern for some people who feel that those undocumented raw files should never be touched in any way. For that reason, there’s a checkbox in Catalog Settings > Metadata tab which allows you to choose whether the updated time is stored only in the catalog, exported files, and XMP sidecar files, or whether it can be updated in your original raw files too.
Lightroom (cloud-based) desktop – fix date and time
Lightroom (cloud-based) desktop – fix date and timeThis is currently only available on the desktop, not mobile, but it’s an easy fix:
- Select the photos in the Photo Grid or Square Grid so that your changes apply to all selected photos.
- Go to the Photo menu > Edit Date & Time or click the pencil icon next to the date field in the Info panel.
- In the Shift Date Range dialog, enter the correct date and time for the most recent photo in the selection and press Change. Other selected photos automatically shift by the same increment, rather than all being set to the same time.
For all the tips you need to get the best from using Lightroom, download Adobe Lightroom Classic – The Missing FAQ if you use Lightroom Classic or Adobe Lightroom – Edit Like a Pro for the cloud-based desktop, mobile and web version. Both books can be downloaded immediately after purchasing. If you’re already a current Premium Member, the updated eBooks are available for download in your Members Area.
Both books are in their 2nd Edition and also available as paperbacks.
Originally posted 13 December 2014, updated to include Lightroom (cloud-based) October 2020.
Such a simple fix for a small but troublesome problem (especially when using two cameras, and one is an hour out!). Thank you so much for this!
Hey, for some reason lightroom shows my new edited capture time (the correct time), but when I export with meta data, it shows “captured” as the original wrong time my camera was set too. I am using Lightroom CC, I cant work out how to make the export have the new edited capture time.
What version number are you using? And what format are you exporting as? And finally, what are you viewing the exported metadata in?
I feel like I’m missing something about how Lightroom works and I’ve been trying to understand and research it but having no luck. Hopefully this makes sense…the date/time on my camera was set wrong so photos I took in August 2023 come up as November 2022. I brought the photos into Lightroom and followed the instructions here to change the capture date. Worked perfectly… but here is where I am confused. If I go to the photo on my desktop and get info, it shows the capture date as November 2022. I know there is a “modified date” but that is not what I mean. It says “capture date” and still shows November (as opposed to today’s date, for example, which would be the “modified date”). If I open it in iPhoto it also shows the date as November 2022. But if I look at it in Lightroom it says August 2023. Is there something else I should be doing to get that November date updated to August or am I not understanding something about the meta data? Any guidance is appreciated, thanks.
No Carol, that’s correct. Lightroom updates the date in its own database. Depending on the file type, you can save metadata back to the file itself too (Metadata > save Metadata to File)
oooo interesting. I don’t see an option for metadata but I do have an export and if I do that I can save it with the metadata. At that point if I open it in the photo app on my Mac it does show the new correct date. I think that solves it! Thank you so much, this was driving me crazy.
Assuming it’s Lightroom Classic you’re using, at the top of the screen (while in Library Mode), Metadata > save Metadata to File
Thanks Victoria, saved me a headache. Changing Lightroom Cloud from filmstrip/detail view to grid view when selecting the photos is an important step!
Yes, that one trips lots of people up!
Victoria, I neglected to “sync” the time between my main camera and the remote that I was triggering with it. The time difference is 38 seconds. If I choose all the images from the remote camera, select the first image and increase “it’s” time by 38 seconds, by following your instructions above, will that correct the other images by the same timeframe? Kind regards, Tom
Yep, you’ve got it!
Hi, has anyone tried to do this and found the ‘shift by a number…’ times are all greyed out?
Hmmm, shouldn’t be. Post it on the forum (link in the menubar) with screenshots and we’ll try to help you figure it out.
Thanks again! You just helped me a few weeks back. Not all of the sudden the button was gone that lets me change the capture time of photos. Didn’t know this works via the menu as well. Thanks!!
It used to be you could access this menu item with a click from the Metadata panel, but it appears that that option no longer exists. Does anyone know of a way to bring it back?
At the bottom of the Metadata panel, click the Customise button. They’ve used individual Date and Time lines, but there’s a combined Capture Date/Time option that has the edit capture time button, so just change which fields are checked.
Oddly enough, I verified they were in the destination folder (and that the destination folder matched the folder in lightroom) before allowing them to be deleted. they stayed in the hard drive folder.
When I synced the folder in LR, MOST stacked properly.
Oh well, I’ll take a small group next and do the import of JPG and raw together. Just not my normal process since I upload the two separate SD cards to two separate hard drive folders and import separately (I get to check that I go the same number of files from each card (or maybe a couple fewer raw pictures if I deleted the accidental snaps of the ground immediately from the raw SD card but didn’t cycle all the way through to delete the JPG version of it.
This is a little long, mostly because I think the process contributed to the problem.
I went on vacation a couple of months ago and changed the timezone on my D750. When I came home, I forgot to set it back. Since then I’ve photographed about a dozen college field hockey games. So I have roughly 2500 files with the wrong capture time. I shoot Raw+JPEG to separate cards.
As a test, I imported one games worth (under 250) into LR Classic, starting with the NEF files.
I selected all of these and, using the metadata panel, edited the capture time. I adjusted all by 5 hours (option 2) and everything looked fine. I imported the JPEG files (I have the preference NOT set to treat JPEG next to Raw as separate files). I adjusted the times on the JPEGs. The JPEGs and raws were separate. I selected the folder and synchronized. I was told there were 237 “missing files”
They were all JPEGs (but not all of them, just most)
The file location on the OS (windows) and the folder location were the same.
Filenames were the same except for the filetype.
Capture times were the same (to the second anyway)
I let LR remove the missing files and synch.
I now have mostly raw files showing “Sidecar Files: xmp, JPG”
However, I also have a handful where I am seeing both the JPEG and NEF file and the NEF is showing “Sidecar Files: xmp” — I cannot see any difference between the JPEG and NEF except for the filetype.
Am I missing something obvious? Do I import all the raw then JPEG and THEN change the time on all simultaneously? If I can’t come up with a straightforward process I’ll be dumping the JPEGs.
Is there a way to force the handful which aren’t merged to do so?
Or with 2000plus files to import, do I just skip the JPEG
That does sound a bit of a tangle!
237 missing – for whatever reason, these JPG didn’t end up in the target folder.
I’d suggest (having had this happen to me a number of times on trips!) importing everything (all file types, unless you expressly don’t want the JPG) for a specific trip. Then just select all of them and make the adjustment as described above.
Any issue with raw+JPG / stacking is outside of the timing change.
Small group test (1 game, ~250 photos raw, the same jpg) — import all from a single folder (match up numbers on SD cards instead of in folders on disk) — import to date-event-sequence filenames in dated folder structure (year folder, month folder, event name folder), keywords on import. After import, everything properly stacked, adjust time by 5 hours for everything. Seems good.
Thanks — changing my workflow as you recommended seems to have avoided the problem. Strange how we get stuck doing things one way.
Excellent, I’m really pleased it’s helped!
I wish Lightroom (cloud-based) would finally give me the option to add/edit location data to my photos. That is pretty much the only issue preventing an iPad-only workflow for me.
I’m sure there’s an existing feature request, but I can’t find it on the updated feedback site. Here’s instructions on how to add a new one: https://www.lightroomqueen.com/send-bug-report-feature-request-adobe/
I am taking sports photos and I have several series of photos that have the same timestamp down to the second, but if I sort by Capture Time in Lightroom, the photos are out of order compared to a sort by Filename. Is there a way to adjust sub-second timestamps on photos to get Capture Time and Filename sorts to be the same? I tried to adjust the whole series of photos, but it seems the offset between photos is kept and they are still out of order.
Hmmm, which version of Lightroom are you running? Capture Time is supposed to be running a secondary sort on the Filename automatically, so any photos shot in the same second should then use the filename.
Why is there no option to adjust by the half hour? For example the tme difference between New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur is 2.5 hours.
You can do it using the instructions above Tom. You just need the Adjust to a specified date and time option rather than the whole hours.
I found the answer here: https://photo.stackexchange.com/a/7923
Hello!
I need to shift the edit capture time by shifting by +1628 hours. Is that possible in Lightroom?
Thank you!
Glauco