by bsac » Fri Sep 05, 2025 5:54 pm
OK, if I already have the Date Taken meta data for a given file I can paste in a new date/time stamp because the time & date are unique and correspond to the exact time/date the photo was taken.
For the files that don't have date taken metadata I tried using item date but the date/time stamp are not unique, thus not giving me a unique file name. That is, many of the files have the exact date/time and thus producing non-unique values.
NOTE: I rescued many of these photos from a devastating PC crash that corrupted many of my family photos and I had to rebuild from scratch, thus my challenge.
My plan is to get a corresponding YYYY_MM_DD prefix on each photo THEN process the photos THROUGH EXIF Date Changer using its function (set date/time from DATE in FILE NAME. If I do this then it automatically changes all the screwed metadata like Date Taken, Date Created, Date Modified and Item Date back to the DATE TAKEN. This will ensure if I ever accidently erase the file name, I can use the metadata in the file to rename the file.
Let me know if you have any better ideas because this is what I found that works so far. Getting access to changing metadata in BULK is difficult especially in free programs. I do not want to install nor want to subscribe to Adobe Lightroom/Bridge to get access to such paid programs. SO, this is the path I found so far.
Of course, I am open to suggestion for a more effective/efficient way of editing my photos in BULK.