Jason Dunn
03-08-2006, 07:00 PM
I frequently need to change time stamp information on a photo. Let's say I'm on vacation and I take pictures at a restaurant, then on the way out I take a picture of the sign. When I return from vacation, I want to make that picture of the sign the first image in that series of restaurant images. I want to "change history" as it were.
ACDSEE 8 (http://www.acdsystems.com/) (my tool of choice for complex image management) allows me to do that, to a point. Their Adjust Time Stamp tool works well enough to change the EXIF data and file time stamps, but it requires too many steps. If I want to change every last time/date element of an image, it requires using the Adjust Time Stamp tool exactly five times: Created Date, Last Modified Date, EXIF Camera Date/Time, EXIF Image Date/Time Original, and EXIF Date/Time Digitized.
Why change all those? Because I've found that the different software programs I use look at various data points when sorting. One might use Date Created, one might use Last Modified, etc. So it's important to get all the data points synced up to the same date/time, which is a painfully long process in ACDSEE 8. It's also awkward because I have to look at the image I want this modified image to go before, memorize the time stamp on it, then use that to change the aspects on every other image.
Thinking about this even further, I'd love to see a "time stamp drag and drop" tool, one where I'd have the ability to drag and drop an image beside another image, and the image I dropped would automatically have all five time stamp fields updated to be one minute before the next image in the sequence (or something similar and user-adjustable).
Does anyone else struggle with this issue? If so, have you found a really great tool to help you solve it? I've found ACDSEE to be the best of the programs I have at this - Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 2006 was even worse, it only allows adjustments to be made for time zone variances.
ACDSEE 8 (http://www.acdsystems.com/) (my tool of choice for complex image management) allows me to do that, to a point. Their Adjust Time Stamp tool works well enough to change the EXIF data and file time stamps, but it requires too many steps. If I want to change every last time/date element of an image, it requires using the Adjust Time Stamp tool exactly five times: Created Date, Last Modified Date, EXIF Camera Date/Time, EXIF Image Date/Time Original, and EXIF Date/Time Digitized.
Why change all those? Because I've found that the different software programs I use look at various data points when sorting. One might use Date Created, one might use Last Modified, etc. So it's important to get all the data points synced up to the same date/time, which is a painfully long process in ACDSEE 8. It's also awkward because I have to look at the image I want this modified image to go before, memorize the time stamp on it, then use that to change the aspects on every other image.
Thinking about this even further, I'd love to see a "time stamp drag and drop" tool, one where I'd have the ability to drag and drop an image beside another image, and the image I dropped would automatically have all five time stamp fields updated to be one minute before the next image in the sequence (or something similar and user-adjustable).
Does anyone else struggle with this issue? If so, have you found a really great tool to help you solve it? I've found ACDSEE to be the best of the programs I have at this - Microsoft's Digital Image Suite 2006 was even worse, it only allows adjustments to be made for time zone variances.