Corrupt photo dates

[randym]

What is the status on this issue? Given its potential seriousness, I'm surprised it has been inactive for so long.

[Hert]

Topic starter resized a few thousand photos and "a few" had corrupt dates. In 99.9% of the cases that is pre-existing corruption (garbage in is garbage out). Topic starter never provided samples with confirmed correct pre-existing photo dates and a click path to corruption.
I've stated this before: if PSU would have a date corruption issue then that would be something that would be reported constantly as dates are about the most important and visible metadata item of a photo.

Afaik there's no issue with corrupt photo dates. Do have an issues with photo dates?

[fbungarz]

I can only agree. If this was a regular, serious problem, then there would be tons of users complaining and be filing Mantis tickets to fix it. Like Hert I would strongly suspect that (1) either the dates were already corrupt in the first place, when the images were loaded into PSu, or (2) they were subsequently messed-up by third-party tools. In both cases PSu can hardly be blamed. There is always the potential that any software that regularly touches and modifies metadata will corrupt those. I have used the program (and its precursors) since 2006 and not experienced any case yet of serious metadata corruption.
The only major issue I experienced many, many years ago was the corruption of NEF files by allowing to let IDImager write metadata to these files. I never again enabled that setting. I also have been disillusioned a bit by DNG files, they generally seem a bit more prone to corruption than the original raws. I had a few DNGs in those 10+ years that got corrupted (no idea how, no idea if IDI or PSU was to blame) ...

[randym]

Thanks. I did note that the topic starter was active on the forum as late as 12/31, so he or she apparently has not given up on photo supreme, as I would if I thought it was corrupting metadata dates.

[barneagle]

No, I've not given up on Photo Supreme! (Sorry for the delay in coming back to this thread ... I have been busy on other things for the last few days.) I have used it to add keywords, ratings and descriptions to several thousand photos and so far as I now know it has not corrupted any of them.

When I encountered a different metadata problem I found that the data was wrong before the affected files were imported to Photo Supreme. As Hert says: GIGO! The same may well have been true for the photos with incorrect dates: at this stage I have no way of being sure. So I have no reason to suppose that Photo Supreme corrupted any data. I'm sorry I doubted the program, and I apologise if I have caused anyone else to doubt it.

[barneagle]

I'm sorry to raise this subject again, but I have noticed a few more photos appearing on the wrong dates in PSU.

I have attached an example photo file (IMG_6995.jpg). I tried also to attach another file (IMG_6993) taken at the same time and place which appears not to have been corrupted, but the upload failed and an error message reported "The image file you tried to attach is invalid." Is there perhaps a size limit for attachments? The file is 1.1MB.

Neither of the two photos has been touched by any apps other than Windows Explorer and PSU. They were both:
- taken at about the same time (within a minute or two of each other)
- copied (using Windows Explorer) from the SD card to my computer
- imported into PSU (along with all other photos in the same folder)
- labelled in PSU with a Catalog label (tag) to indicate the place ("Wroxeter") where they were taken; the label was applied at the same time to all photos taken at Wroxeter
- at a later date resized (using PSU's Batch Resize option applied to all files in the same folder).

Between applying the Wroxeter tag and resizing I went through all photos which were shown by PSU against that date and applied further tags. IMG_6993 has had additional tags applied; the file appears to have its metadata intact and appears in PSU with the correct time and date (2017-02-25) which appear in the XMP metadata.

IMG_6995, by contrast, appears to have lost all its metadata and is shown by PSU against the time and date (2017-05-02) which Windows Explorer records as the file modification date/time. I imagine this was when the file was resized. PSU still records the one label that was applied, but these don't seem to be recorded in the metadata. The fact that it has no other labels suggests to me that the date corruption occurred after the Wroxeter label was applied but before I went through the photos on that date and applied other labels (such as to indicate what the photo was of). If it had still appeared under the correct date I would have tagged it in the same way as IMG_6993. I therefore believe that PSU lost track of the correct date after I applied the Wroxeter tag (perhaps immediately after) and certainly before it was resized.

I am using "Build 3.3.0.2598 (64 bits)" of Photo Supreme with Windows 10.
I have it set to synchronise all changes when I apply them.

What can I be doing wrong?

Please let me know if I can supply any further information.

[barneagle]

I have realised that I have a backup copy of IMG_6995 which I made after the Wroxeter label had been applied but before the image was resized. This seems to have intact metadata.

The file is too large for me to upload, but I have attached an extract of the first part of the file which I have copied from Notepad++.

I almost certainly made the backup by a Windows Explorer file copy of the folder containing the photo. It is just possible that I made the copy using PSU's batch export option (Ctrl-E).

I have remembered that as well as applying one tag I also adjusted the timestamp to make the photo fit into sequence with those taken on my wife's phone. I would have done this by using PSU's Re-Date option (Ctrl-Shift-D) applied to all the photos in the folder. There would have been about 477 photos at the time.

Is it possible that one of PSU's batch operations (Re-Date or Resize), when applied to a batch of several hundred photos, might have caused the corruption?

I have noticed 4 other photos (out of about 3000 imported into PSU this year) have corrupt dates. They were taken at different dates and are in different folders, so would have been subject to batch operations at different times. Not all of them have been Re-Dated.

Please let me know if I can supply any more information.