Files get renamed incorrectly (date) in Lightroom.

[raczoliver]

<p>Ok, Lightroom has been driving me nuts lately. I name my files according to the date and time the picture was taken. My exact template if anyone cares is yyyy-mm-dd hh.mm'ss''. Now the problem is, there is a bunch of pictures that get renamed to a totally wrong date, eg. 2010-11-28 15.37'41'' instead of 2007-11-27 17.05'04'' (yes, that was thanksgiving dinner). What is interesting is that the metadata for the pictures is correct. Other pictures of the same event that are in a different folder renamed correctly. What am I doing wrong?</p>

[robert_hall2]

<p>I don't bother with renaming photos in lightroom or photoshop. I use the most powerful renaming software no money can buy. It's free. It's called The Rename. It will do more than you ever want but is easy to use. It's available as a CNET download. <br>

http://download.cnet.com/THE-Rename/3000-2248_4-11420.html</p>

[howard_m]

<p>I dont know why either the PC or LR (on the PC) is having naming issues like that but as an IT guy, you are really playing w/ fire by trying to use ' and " as file-naming characters.</p>

<p>I'd STRONGLY urge you not do that. it's going to come back and bite you in the @ss. Also, having pure time as a name is a loser because what happens when you put the cmaera on 8FPS and 8 frames have exactly the same time? Better to use the image/frame number suffix as part of the name.</p>

<p>I think my numbering scheme is something like 101128_1537_xyz.nef (where xyz is the frame number)</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>Are these files straight out of the camera, or have they been touched by other software first? Can you post one complete with metadata? And what version of Lightroom?</p>

[raczoliver]

<p>If I have multiple frames taken within a second, they automatically get a -1, -2 etc. appended in the end of the file name, so that hasn't been a problem so far. I want the files to appear in chronological order in external file browsers as well, and I tag my photos with keywords and organize them in their respective folders, so I don't really need more information in the file name itself. However, your naming scheme looks attractive too. I am really still experimenting with the whole organization thing, so I might give everything a try.</p>

<p>I will take a look at The Rename if I can't come up with something. Thanks.</p>

[digitaldog]

<p>I also use a date-time from capture in my file name, no issues at all. Knowing the version of LR would be useful as well as your OS. </p>

[don_gallagher]

<p>I don't know exactly how you are renaming the file in LR, but is it possible that the renaming function is picking up the date/time from the file modified date instead of the photo date? This might happen if the file had been modified by another program, as Mark asked about. We have seen LR not pick up metadata properly from significantly older files that had been saved from Photoshop 3.</p>

[raczoliver]

<p>They are all pictures that were edited in Photoshop, however, definitely not on the date they get renamed to. A lot of photos get renamed to the exact same time (and a quite recent one).</p>

<p>I am actually even more confused now, because as I check the metadata, even the time that says is not completely correct (as I remember, that is the time I edited it), but the file name is yet a third, wrong date. I am trying to think of what I did to them at that time, but I can't really come up with anything. The interesting thing is that a lot of pictures, taken years apart, got renamed to the exact same date of 2010-10-06, the time is also same, to the second in a lot of cases.</p>

<p>I'll try to post one of the pictures, this one renamed to 2010-10-06 [01.02'41''].jpg, but in the exif, lightroom says 1/6/2007 14:11:52, which is most likely when I edited the picture (so it is possible that this jpeg was created on that day. If this went into the file name, I would understand that). The NEF file of the same picture shows and renames correctly to the date the exposure was taken, which was in December, 2006. All these problem pictures are from my early digital days when I did not care much about metadata, so it is very possible that I messed something up, it would just be good to know what and how to fix it.</p>

<p>BTW, I use Windows 7 and Lightroom 3. I keep it updated, so I suppose it is 3.2 now. Thanks for all the help.</p><div></div>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>This file doesn't contain any of the usual date fields that digital cameras produce (the EXIF field DateTimeOriginal, for example).</p>

<p>LR is pulling that date from the EXIF field called ModifyDate, according to ExifTool, but I can't find a definition for that field anywhere. It's not in EXIF 2.2; perhaps it's from an earlier EXIF standard? There is an XMP property by that name, which is defined as "The date and time the resource was last modified. It should be the same as or more recent than xmp:ModifyDate."</p>

<p>The filename matches the the XMP field MetadataDate, which is defined as "The date and time that any metadata for this resource was last changed."</p>

<p>So whatever you're doing with them in Photoshop is messing up the metadata. You could use ExifTool or something similar to re-populate the proper date fields, if you want to correct it.</p>

[don_gallagher]

<p>I agree with Mark, somehow PS has altered the EXIF metadata. ExifTool (ExifTool + ExifTool GUI is what we use) will correct your metadata if you want to rectify the file dates. This is the situation we had with our older files. You want to populate the EXIF field <em>DateTimeOriginal </em>and perhaps <em>CreateDate</em> (experiment with this) and LR should then read the correct date.</p>