photographs dated as 30 December 1899

[Londoner]

I am running a trial version on OSX Mavericks.

I have imported a test folder.

Dynamic Search by date shows a number of photographs dated as 30 December 1899. However, the Info button shows the correct date of the photographs, and other photos from the same shoot are shown with the correct date in Dynamic Search.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

[Hert; updated the title to better reflect the content; original title was "Dynamic search date problem"]

[Hert]

Can you check this:
1. Click CATALOG->By date
2. Is there an 1899 date (meaning that no date is in the database yet)?
3. If so, click the counter right of the 1899 item to get all the images from 1899
4. Select all thumbs (Cmd-A)
5. Right click (or Ctrl-Click if you use a single button mouse) on a selected thumb and select Metadata -> Read metadata from file

Click FOLDERS, click CATALOG->By Date. Are there still 1899 dates?

[Londoner]

Thanks, right clicking on Read Metadata seems to have worked.

I appreciate the speedy response.

[vlad]

Hert: I can confirm this works for me too. But could you please briefy explain why it works, especially since saving metadata to file (rather than reading it from file) fixes the problem as well? Moreover, Convert Metadata as XMP fixes the problem too. I don't understand why the problem arises in the first place and how it can be fixed by any metadata action!

(I'm asking because I have >2000 images with the wrong dates - but also because I've seen the issue regularly popping up in the forum, with no clear explanation offered. Even if I trust PSU, I'm a bit wary of solutions that I don't understand - seems a bit like black magic to me . Please note that in my case I don't touch the metadata with any other program than PSU. And yes, I'm virtually 100% sure about this!)

[Hert]

Hi Vlad,
Photo Supreme is fully XMP driven and the photo date, the one that determines where in the timeline the picture is placed, is also first extracted from XMP. By reading the metadata, the date in the database is also redetermined. If after this step you still have 0 dates then you'd have to convert metadata to XMP, if then there are still zero dates then there is no date available and redating the file is the solution to provide a metadata date.

Ps. Of course it could be that the dated is zeroed out somewhere, but I currently have no reason to think that happens. Maybe you could keep an eye on it after clearing your current 0 date batch.

[vlad]

Hi Hert,

Thanks for the previous explanations. I'm looking again at this issue, since I'd like to understand it better + I think I've discovered a correlation between images with incorrect dates (12-30-1899) and unexpected results in the search bar (...still investigating).

Photo Supreme is fully XMP driven and the photo date, the one that determines where in the timeline the picture is placed, is also first extracted from XMP.

I have finally discovered elsewhere in the forum how PSU determines the photo date, I'm copying the scheme here for quick reference:

The general purpose "photo date" is constructed as:

first XMP's exif:DateTimeOriginal
if not exists XMP's exif:DateTimeDigitized
If not exists XMP's tiff:DateTime
if not exists EXIF's date time original
if not exists EXIF's date time digitized
if not exists EXIF's base date (0x132)
if not exists File Last Modification Date

Info Panel shows XMP's exif:DateTimeDigitized

In my case, if I'm looking at the image details panel, the time fields in the Technical section, as well as exif:DateTimeOriginal and exif:DateTimeDigitized inside XMP Advanced, they all show the correct dates! In the Info panel I have also added custom fields for all the Date/Time fields I could find (using the hierarchical macro menus - that's a neat feature, btw!) and I'm attaching a screenshot with those custom fields.

As you could see, Date Time Original (which is defined as: exif:DateTimeOriginal) and Date Time Digitized (that is: exif:DateTimeDigitized) are indeed empty (not sure why), but %exif:DateTimeOriginal and %exif:DateTimeDigitized both have the correct dates. Now, based on the above scheme, shouldn't PSU set the timeline date correctly?

By reading the metadata, the date in the database is also redetermined.

A-ha! That explains why reading the metadata fixes the date. (In my case, it also fills the empty date fields.)
Still, I have the following questions:
1) Writing the metadata to file or converting it to XMP have exactly the same effects. Is it correct that all these actions trigger the redetermination of the database date?
2) Any hint on what circumstances could trigger the database dates to become stale (incorrect), given that I'm only working in PSU and I haven't touched the image dates at all?

Thanks in advance for any further explanation.

Custom fields for a file which appears cataloged under: 12-30-1899

DateTimeInfo.png (21.29 KiB) Viewed 6658 times

[freudenthaler]

2) Any hint on what circumstances could trigger the database dates to become stale (incorrect), given that I'm only working in PSU and I haven't touched the image dates at all?

Vlad, just a quick annotation: Hert has mentioned several times, that if there's already an xmp section in the image available, PSu just reads this section and doesn't initially convert the exif data.
Did you process (or maybe just open) the picture in an other sw, which maybe did the conversion exif->xmp implicitly? Maybe the date isn't converted right?

[vlad]

Robert, thanks for the suggestion. I didn't process the picture in another sw. But even if I did, it shouldn't matter, because the screenshot shows the field values as displayed by PSU itself. My understanding, based on the schema provided by Hert, is that PSU should use %exif:DateTimeOriginal in my case. (And its value appears correct as per what PSU itself shows). Am I wrong?

There is a small detail, however - and it may in fact be significant: the picture is marked as out-of-sync (and so are all my pictures with incorrect dates, I've noticed.) The OOS state is not unexpected or worrying to me, since I intentionally disabled auto-syncing at some point and decided on purpose to manually sync only from time to time. (I still backup my catalog regularly, though.) Nevertheless, based on my own findings and on a previous discussion (in Mantis), I'm becoming more and more convinced that leaving images unsynced not only impacts their metadata state in the physical image (or sidecar) files, but also the internal state of various metadata in the PSU database. I don't have any other explanation for the incorrect dates in my case.

Bottom line, I guess that working with unsynced images outside a limited window of time (during which various info displayed in PSU itself may be unreliable) is simply not a good idea. This is a bit disappointing to me, but I'll adapt my settings and workflow accordingly, if needed. (If anyone has valuable experience on working with unsynced images for more than brief periods of time, then please share it.)

[alaindominique]

Just fyi, I have the same problem.
I use the try version 64 bits for Windows.
I am importing 18300 images mostly taken with a Canon Powershot G10 and some of them with a Panasonic DMC-FS62, the rest from diverse origins.
From these 18300 images, 17800 are dated from dec. 1899 in the catalogue sorted by date! Also, the other informations like ISO, focus, speed, sensivity, even the size are not always mentioned.

I'll try your tip to correct the date but there is ibviously a problem.

But do you have any idea where it might come from ?

Regards,

Alain