# Edit Capture Time - Multiple Photos



## BarryJones (Apr 24, 2020)

Has anyone else noticed that when selecting multiple photos and editing capture time (such as a batch of scanned images requiring correction) that the first file selected is exactly corrected but subsequent files have small incremental increases in the secs and mins fields?   It's not a major inconvenience but a 'feature' that I have noticed for many years and have worked around.
Barry


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## Paul McFarlane (Apr 24, 2020)

Hi Barry and welcome to the Forums!

That's expected behavior if you use Adjust to a specific date and time. The assumption is the whole run of photos selected are out by x amount. Check page 126 in your Classic book for the explanation.


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## Victoria Bampton (Apr 24, 2020)

Hi Barry, welcome to the forum!

Lightroom's Edit Capture Time should shift the timestamps by the same amount, rather than shifting to exactly the same time. The slight differences you're seeing would likely be the time between each scan, unless I'm misunderstanding you. For scans, try Capture Time to Exif – John Beardsworth


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## BarryJones (Apr 24, 2020)

Many thanks for the clarification - I should have searched Victoria's excellent book more diligently!  Thanks Victoria for the plug-in reference as well.


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## Linwood Ferguson (Apr 25, 2020)

A nice side effect is it keeps them in the same order.


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## LeeMiller (Apr 25, 2020)

A somewhat related question -- back in the day when iPhoto was still useful, it had a feature that allowed you to easily sort photos in a grid view (also possible in LR) then assign new capture times with a specified interval between photos. This was really nice for getting an approximate date on a bunch of images that were scanned in random order. As far as I can tell, there is no comparable LR tool. Is that right?


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## Califdan (Apr 25, 2020)

What's missing is a "real"  adjust to specific time option.   For example I scanned a bunch of photos from 1948.  I don't know the month, day, or time so want them all to be 1/1/1948 00:00:00.    Can't do that in bulk.  Just one image at a time or use a 3rd party tool outside of LR and let LR read the metadata back in.


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## WildVanilla (Apr 26, 2020)

Victoria Bampton said:


> Hi Barry, welcome to the forum!
> 
> Lightroom's Edit Capture Time should shift the timestamps by the same amount, rather than shifting to exactly the same time. The slight differences you're seeing would likely be the time between each scan, unless I'm misunderstanding you. For scans, try Capture Time to Exif – John Beardsworth


Ah, that's a good tip. I've started a lockdown project to scan all my pre-diigtal photos. That LR 'feature' has been bugging me, so I'll try the plugin too.

Rob


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 26, 2020)

Califdan said:


> I don't know the month, day, or time so want them all to be 1/1/1948 00:00:00


I'm scanning old slides and negatives as well. I'm using EXIFTOOL to make bulk changes before importing them into LR.  The 3 related fields I set are 'DateTimeOriginal', 'DateTimeDigitalized' and 'CreateDate'. I use a MS-DOS BAT file on Windows 10 to do this.


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## Replytoken (Apr 26, 2020)

Paul_DS256 said:


> I'm scanning old slides and negatives as well. I'm using EXIFTOOL to make bulk changes before importing them into LR.  The 3 related fields I set are 'DateTimeOriginal', 'DateTimeDigitalized' and 'CreateDate'. I use a MS-DOS BAT file on Windows 10 to do this.


If you are not already using it, there is also an EXIFTool GUI program that is a very convenient front end if you are working outside of LR.

--Ken


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## LeeMiller (Apr 26, 2020)

I use SetExifData, mostly to set file times to the Exif times. Is there a Mac version of EXIFToolGUI? Any other way of accomplishing the fixed offset between photo capture times for scans?


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## johnrellis (Apr 26, 2020)

LeeMiller said:


> Any other way of accomplishing the fixed offset between photo capture times for scans?





LeeMiller said:


> A somewhat related question -- back in the day when iPhoto was still useful, it had a feature that allowed you to easily sort photos in a grid view (also possible in LR) then assign new capture times with a specified interval between photos. This was really nice for getting an approximate date on a bunch of images that were scanned in random order. As far as I can tell, there is no comparable LR tool. Is that right?



The Capture Time To Exif plugin mentioned above is a convenient way to do this. I've scanned thousands of slides, and it's convenient to have the approximate date (taken from the processing date printed on the slide) assigned to all the slides, with times incrementing by one second from 00:00:00, so all the slides for a given date sort in Library grid view in the order they were taken.


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## johnrellis (Apr 26, 2020)

Also, many people have requested a fourth option for LR's Metadata > Edit Capture Time that would set all the selected photos to the exact same date:
https://feedback.photoshop.com/phot..._to_set_all_photos_selected_to_same_date_time 

Please add your constructive opinion to the feature request and click Vote and Follow in the upper-right corner. Adobe stopped investing in Library improvements years ago (especially after the introduction of the "Classic" branding), but who knows, they may finally implement it, given how trivial it is.


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## Replytoken (Apr 26, 2020)

LeeMiller said:


> I use SetExifData, mostly to set file times to the Exif times. Is there a Mac version of EXIFToolGUI? Any other way of accomplishing the fixed offset between photo capture times for scans?


Unfortunately, I am not aware of a Mac version.  An old post by Phil on his forum mentions SetExifData for the Mac.

--Ken


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 26, 2020)

Replytoken said:


> there is also an EXIFTool GUI program


I use that too Ken. Mostly to interrogate the contents of different schema's of metadata or look for a problem. For example, Pixel on Android phones do not record much in the way of metadata.


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## Paul_DS256 (Apr 26, 2020)

LeeMiller said:


> Is there a Mac version of EXIFToolGUI?


I don't see a MAC version for EXIFTOOLGUI. There is a MAC version for EXIFTOOL.


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## LeeMiller (Apr 26, 2020)

Well this is embarrassing, John. Now that you mentioned it, I recalled having downloaded the Capture Time To Exif plugin some time ago (and upon checking, I found in in my emails from Jan 2019) for exactly that purpose. Thanks for the reminder. I do have the  Mac version of SetExifData, but not ExifTool. I gather that has more function? Worth trying, Paul?


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