Date Stampin'

December 10, 2006 5:34 AM

I just bought a new camera that I'm very happy with (a Sony DSC-H2) but there's one imporant thing that it doesn't seem to do: Put a date stamp on the pictures! This is essential for a disorganized guy like me. How can I get datestamps on my pictures in some other tricky way once the pictures are moved to my PC?

Remember - this has to be quick and easy. I might come back from a trip with 200 shots. If it takes even thirty seconds per picture to apply a datestamp, then that's more than an hour and a half of work! What would be perfect would be a utility of some kind that would read the "Date Taken" stamp on the picture file and automatically stamp it on the photo. Does such a thing exist? Is there another way? I have searched the manual for my new camera and, amazingly, it really doesn't seem to have this feature. I'd rather not return it because I love many of the other features (and because there's a 15% restocking fee), but I'll consider that if there are no other options. Thanks.

posted by crapples to technology (8 comments total)

A quick google yields a pile of results. Don't forget, all digital cameras automatically time/date stamp (along with a pile of other information, shutter speed, aperture, zoom etc.) in the EXIF data of the file.
posted by defcom1 at 6:14 AM on December 10, 2006

It turns out that that feature is going away as people start to use photo software that reads the EXIF data that defcom1 was talking about. A timestamp on the image means that a human has to look at every photo to see when it was taken. Why go to the trouble when your software can just read the meta data and store all your pictures in the correct order automatically?

The "Date Modified" stamp that shows up on your digital picture files in Windows (or Mac OS, or Linux) will be the day that the image was taken, assuming your camera's date/time were set correctly.
posted by yellowbkpk at 6:54 AM on December 10, 2006

defcom1 is right. Furthermore, most photo editing and management applications and many photo sharing websites acknowledge the EXIF data as well. When it's in the EXIF data, any good photo app (iPhoto on the Mac, or whatever came bundled with your camera) can sort your photos by time and date for you; you don't have to look at the images and do it manually. So unless you want timestamps imposed visibly on the images, it's more effective to keep it behind the scenes and let automation do the work.
posted by ardgedee at 6:57 AM on December 10, 2006

Another suggestion would be to rename all of your photos by date taken. Lot of batch renamers will do this using the EXIF info. At least this way you can quickly tell when the picture was taken without having to check the EXIF.
posted by gfrobe at 8:00 AM on December 10, 2006

Second (third, fourth) the EXIF data comments. It's MUCH nicer having the date information in the file rather than stamped over the actual image.

It looks like there is software out there that will take the EXIF data and superimpose it onto the images in post-production, like how you want.

Here's one I found on the Google... no idea of whether or not it's any good or not, just evidence of this type of software existing!
posted by nitsuj at 8:04 AM on December 10, 2006

Furthermore, since the images are JPEG-compressed when they're in the camera, modifying the image data to add a corner-stamp will require recompression, which kills the quality. It's possible to do this with minimal quality loss (if you recompress using exactly the same settings that were used the first time), but it's still inferior compared to keeping the metadata out of the actual image.

You might try http://www.vicman.net/lib/exif-date.htm for a list of programs that appear to do what you're looking for.
posted by Myself at 10:22 AM on December 10, 2006

The main reason I want to do this is because two summers ago iPhoto crashed on me. When I went to restore my photos using a process that I found online (I don't remember the details) all of the EXIF data was ruined and the "date taken" showed that day's date for all of the photos. This was a huge disaster that I'm still paying for today in the sense that I still have upwards of 300 photos that I can't place on a calendar with better than 6-month give/take accuracy. That bites.

So - after that date I started using date stamps. Maybe I'm over reacting. Now I'm on a PC and I use Picassa. It seems to be pretty stable, and it leaves my files in their natural settings (as opposed to the crazy iPhoto file structure that I used to have. Maybe the newer iPhoto is better, I don't know). I don't want to recompress, so maybe I'll just trust the EXIF data. Thanks for the feedback.
posted by crapples at 1:06 PM on December 10, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

You should really be backing up all your files regularly, or you could lose a lot more than just the timestamps.
posted by mbrubeck at 1:33 PM on December 10, 2006