You can easily correct dates and locations in scanned photos
How to edit image metadata to make your scans easily searchable
When you take a photo with your phone or digital camera, it automatically embeds Date Taken, Location, and a lot of other information in the image. This hidden but easily viewable info is called metadata. However, when you scan photos with a scanner, smartphone or digital camera, the date in the metadata will show when they were scanned, not when they were actually taken. And the location in the metadata will show where they were scanned, not where they were taken.
You need to fix both these things yourself. Luckily, it’s not that hard.
Why Bother?
Why should you care if scans of photos taken in the 1950s, 60s and 70s all show a creation date in 2022? The reason it matters is because all photo management programs — Apple Photos, Microsoft Photos, Flickr, Google Photos etc. — use metadata dates to display photos in chronological order. If the dates are wrong, your photos will be all jumbled up, out of sequence.
What Dates?
Embedded invisibly in every digital photo is a raft of data. If you’ve never seen it, surprise yourself by uploading a photo from your library to this free online metadata viewer.
Much of this data is stamped by the camera. This is called EXIF metadata and it includes details about the camera; aperture, focal length, ISO number and other settings; date and time of capture, GPS coordinates, image format etc.
Then there is descriptive data e.g. scene or event description, keywords, photographer’s name, copyright information, names of people featured etc. This is called IPTC metadata and it may be added either manually, by using previously stored values or by photo management programs. IPTC metadata also includes date created, date scanned, date modified etc.
In all, there are some 90 date and time-related metadata tags. A vast majority of these will be never used by most normal people 🤣. But some are important for everyone — the EXIF and IPTC ones listed in the screenshot below:
Photo management programs mostly follow the EXIF and IPTC conventions correctly, but there are deviations. This sometimes causes problems when moving photos from one program to another — so you may need to update a few tags when correcting metadata dates in scanned photos.
Correcting Creation Date
With Apple Photos or Window File Explorer
If you have a handful of scanned photos, you could manually edit the dates. Apple Photos users can use the command Image > Adjust Date and Time. Windows users can right-click a photo in File Explorer, then select Properties, Details, and edit the Date Taken.
With ExifTool
A far more sophisticated tool, if you are tech-savvy and know command line editing, is Phil Harvey’s ExifTool. This is a Perl library plus a command-line application tool. It is free and multi-platform.
Try the AllDates shortcut, which updates the three most commonly used time stamps: DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate, and ModifyDate. Or dive deeper for other possibilities.
With SnipTag
This macOS app takes its name from its two tools: Snip (for auto-cropping scanned photos) and Tag (for editing image metadata). SnipTag can update the critical date stamps for one or multiple photos at a time. Its advantage over the more powerful ExifTool is ease of use: Import photos into the app, select one or more photos, use the editing tool to modify the date, and export.
The app also lets you edit file names, descriptions, locations, keywords and other EXIF and IPTC metadata tags. It’s free to try but requires a subscription or one-time purchase to unlock full functionality.
Edit Free Online
There are a few websites that let you upload photos, edit metadata and export, but tread carefully — most of them embed, in addition to dates and whatever you add, their own branding or other guff into your images.
In summary, it is very important to edit the Creation Date in scanned photos. It is also worthwhile adding descriptions and locations. Doing it is easy once you have the right tools.
