How do I update exif DateTimeOriginal based on filename?

Question

I want to share 10K photos using Google Photos. These images were scanned, so they don't have correct DateTimeOriginal for chronological ordering.

I need to update DateTimeOriginal to YYYY:01:01 00:00:00 to allow me to organize these within Google Photos for sharing and having some sense of order. My understanding is Google uses exif DateTimeOriginal for sorting.

My photo naming conventions:

1967 Smith G & J Wedding - 3.jpg

1962 Smith Family Reunion - 87.jpeg

1990 Smith 50th Anniversary - 16.jpeg

I tried this:

exiftool "-datetimeoriginal < ${filename;$_=substr($_,0,3)} 01:01 12:00:00" DIR

but receive a BASH "bad substitution error"

Any assistance would be appreciated.

The shell will interpret `$` variables in a double quoted string. Try single quoting the code you pass. — Grinnz, Jan 30 '19 at 20:50

score 3 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 30 '19 at 19:37

3

There may be a better way, but this works:

#!/bin/bash
for f in *.jpg; do
   year=$(grep -Eo "^\d+" <<< "$f")
   echo File: $f, setting year:$year
   exiftool "-datetimeoriginal=${year}01:01 12:00:00" "$f"
done

Debug Output

File: 2013 Family Reunion.jpg, setting year:2013
    1 image files updated
File: 2017 Some wedding.jpg, setting year:2017
    1 image files updated

Try it on a COPY of your files in a temporary directory!

answered Jan 30 '19 at 19:37

Mark Setchell

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Yes! Works for me. Thanks. I'm sure there may be a native way to do this using exiftool's expressions, but this did the trick. – justonetaste2003 Jan 30 '19 at 19:58

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 30 '19 at 23:45

You're close with your original, but as @Grinnz said, you need to use single quotes. Additionally, you want the first 4 numbers for the year, but you're only grabbing 3.

So try:
exiftool '-DateTimeOriginal<${filename;$_=substr($_,0,4)} 01:01 12:00:00' FileOrDir

The startup time of exiftool is its biggest performance hit, so you'll find this is much faster than looping over each file (see exiftool Common Mistake #3).

This command creates backup files. Add -overwrite_original to suppress the creation of backup files. Add -r to recurse into subdirectories.

This is much faster than looping provided above. 10k images using loop took 10minutes. exiftool native took 1 minute for 10k images. Thanks this is the best answer. I appreciate Mark's answer too! — justonetaste2003, Feb 01 '19 at 20:14

How do I update exif DateTimeOriginal based on filename?

2 Answers2