Incorrect date assigned to photo

I did an initial import of my photo library and found that some photos have unexpected dates assigned:

grafik

  • PS thinks that the picture was created on 2002-12-08, 12:00.
  • According to windows, the picture was created on 2013-09-28, 16:05.

exiftool shows both dates (see below): The correct deate as “Date/Time Original”, the incorrect one as “Create Date”. Since all photos in my collection from this particular smartphone have this date assigned, this inconsistency was probably a bug in the phone’s camera app.

So one can probably argue whether this is really a bug in PhotoStructure, but maybe it makes sense to tune the heuristics here?

$ exiftool IMG_20130928_160557.jpg
ExifTool Version Number         : 12.05
File Name                       : IMG_20130928_160557.jpg
Directory                       : .
File Size                       : 1943 kB
File Modification Date/Time     : 2013:09:28 16:05:56+02:00
File Access Date/Time           : 2021:03:22 13:55:10+01:00
File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2013:09:28 16:05:56+02:00
File Permissions                : rwxrwxrwx
File Type                       : JPEG
File Type Extension             : jpg
MIME Type                       : image/jpeg
Exif Byte Order                 : Big-endian (Motorola, MM)
Make                            : HUAWEI
Camera Model Name               : U8860
X Resolution                    : 72
Y Resolution                    : 72
Resolution Unit                 : inches
Y Cb Cr Positioning             : Centered
Exposure Time                   : 1/3030
ISO                             : 160
Exif Version                    : 0220
Date/Time Original              : 2013:09:28 16:05:56
Create Date                     : 2002:12:08 12:00:00
Components Configuration        : Y, Cb, Cr, -
Flash                           : No Flash
Focal Length                    : 4.6 mm
Flashpix Version                : 0100
Color Space                     : sRGB
Exif Image Width                : 3264
Exif Image Height               : 2448
Interoperability Index          : R98 - DCF basic file (sRGB)
Interoperability Version        : 0100
Compression                     : JPEG (old-style)
Thumbnail Offset                : 500
Thumbnail Length                : 58692
Image Width                     : 3264
Image Height                    : 2448
Encoding Process                : Baseline DCT, Huffman coding
Bits Per Sample                 : 8
Color Components                : 3
Y Cb Cr Sub Sampling            : YCbCr4:2:0 (2 2)
Image Size                      : 3264x2448
Megapixels                      : 8.0
Shutter Speed                   : 1/3030
Thumbnail Image                 : (Binary data 58692 bytes, use -b option to extract)
Focal Length                    : 4.6 mm```

## Environment

Operating system and version: Windows 10
PhotoStructure edition: PhotoStructure for Desktop, v0.9.1.

Welcome to PhotoStructure!

Interesting, you’re the second person to report a spurious create date:

I believe CreateDate is valid for most files, though, so I don’t want to simply ignore that tag.

Perhaps if CreateDate, specifically, is this 2002-12-08 date, it gets ignored?

I can also make the tags that are examined for captured-at be configurable.

Hi Matthew,

oh interesting, I did not find this posting. So maybe a bug in some old android version (I believe the Huawei in my case had a version 4 running)?

Configuring the tag set for captured-at looks like a rather advanced option to me: If - like me - you have an assorted collection of pictures from various sources, you probably are not in a position to really judge the effect of this setting.

In my case, I fixed the deviations manually using exiftool (it was always 2002-12-08T12:00). For future use-cases one could think of plausibility checks (i.e., if both DateTimeOriginal and CreateDate are set, they are probably not more than a few minutes apart)., but your suggestion of ignoring CreateDate for this specific date+time looks easier (and probably more robust).

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So maybe a bug in some old android version (I believe the Huawei in my case had a version 4 running)?

It’s possible.
The phone I used to capture the pictures in my post was a Motorola running Android 4.4, but only a portion of the pictures captured with that device got the 2002-12-08 CreateDate :thinking:

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Special 2002:12:08 12:00:00 date-handling was added in March. I just validated this against beta.3, as well.

Update: this is now configurable via the new badDates setting (I couldn’t resist the indiana jones reference)