Date Taken: I display 'Date Taken' under photo thumbnails, but if the photos does not have a Date Taken, the Date Created is displayed. Please change that! If I view photos in Details mode, and there is no date Taken for a Photo, the field is left blank, so I think it should be left blank under thumbnails.
Rating Please add Rating as an option for displaying and editing under thumbnails. Adding Rating is best done when viewing the photos. In Adobe Lightroom Classic, Photo Mechanic, Phototheca, Adobe Bridge, and all the other photo applications I can think of, one can display and edit/change ratings under thumbnails.
Tags Like ratings, I would like to be able to see Tags under thumbnails. That is as standard option and is available in the applications listed above.
I think tags could end up needing a lot of space, at which point Tiles mode may be a better fit. That lets you choose which information is displayed next to thumbnails, and lets you have more room to place it.
Tiles would also give more control over exactly which date field(s) is/are displayed. Might be worth a try.
For the rating, there's an option to overlay ratings on thumbnails. It's only for display and won't let you edit them, but something like Star Ratings Buttons/Menu should take care of that and streamline the workflow. (In-place editing would definitely make sense in the future, though. I'll add it to the ideas list.)
Yes, Tags can and do often require a lot of space. In other applications, if there are a lot of tags for a photo, they won't all be displayed and one would need to view larger thumbnails to see more tags.
I haven't used Tiles mode. I will give that a try.
OR add an option that matches how it works now - Display the file/system Date Created or Date Modified , whichever is earliest when there is no Date Taken.
Yeah,
I see this now.
I have photos taken with an early Sony Mavica that used a floppy disk to record data.
These photos had no metadata at all.
I was able to properly rename these photos after either Modified or Created date, I don't remember which I used. Both time stamps still match the filename to the seconds.
So under Thumbnails, if I check Display date taken in label even though there is no metadata the thumbnails display the original date.
The info tips are probably the best answer here though.
We can use Evaluator in info tips. That may ultimately result in a more specific solution.
But Yeah, I know you would like the ability to filter this within the thumbnail display itself.
It makes sense to me to add that ability.
Better yet would be the ability to use Evaluator to define the Thumbnail display.
But tiles mode can already do this under filetypes !
Only Date Taken should be displayed if Date Taken is what was selected to be displayed in Preferences. It's deceptive to display metadata from another date field if there is no Date Taken.
There is so much confusion and misinformation about photo date metadata, and this does not help!
Please also add Star Ratings to the options of what can be displayed under Thumbnails, as that is a 'standard' option in many photo applications like Adobe Bridge, Lightroom Classic, Photo Mechanic, Mylio, ACDSee and others.
I will be creating a Directory Opus course for professional photo organizers. It will have more appeal if Directory Opus matched certain standards/common practices.
It's true the System/File Date Created and/or Date Modified does often match the date/time the shutter was pressed, but one should never RELY on system/file dates because they can change in many different circumstances when I file is moved, edited, converted etc. So, the fact that the date you see NOW in place of a Date Taken may be correct, it's temporary and unstable. If you shared that photo with someone, moved it to a hard drive with a different format (or other things) the System/File Date Created and/or Date Modified will very likely change.
This isn't a 'Feature request'!
If one chooses to display Date Taken under a thumbnail, only Date Taken should be displayed. No other date metadata should be substituted.
If there was a bug, it was in the label the Preferences checkbox had. (The manual described what it did, but the label was a bit misleading, I agree.) We're changing that to make it clearer.
Guido,
I don't understand your point. Date Taken is not an option in Graphic Converter, but it does have an EXIF date option. Date Taken is a Windows Property, and I've never seen an application for Mac that displays Date Taken.
The EXIF field in Graphic converter will display the EXIF DateTimeOriginal if there is one.
If not it will display another EXIF date, like EXIF Modify Date--if there is one.
If there is no EXIF date metadata, it will display either the File Created date or the File Modified Date, whichever is earliest. So, that is deceptive. Why would an EXIF field display a date that is not an EXIF date? Do you thinks that's good?
The EXIF field in Graphic Converter works the same way as Opus does now, and will display date even when there is no EXIF date.
"As it is now", Opus will a display a date in the Date Taken field under a thumbnail even is there is no Date Taken--even when no Date Taken is displayed in Details view.
If the Directory Opus developers intend to correct the wording in preferences for displaying Date Taken under thumbnails but not change what is displayed, the wording in preference should match the manual, which does say that a Date Modified will be displayed if there is no Date Taken.
If Directory Opus developers do not want to add more options, I understand. That's a separate issue.
No, I think this is misunderstood.
If I ONLY select EXIF date for display in label in GraphicConverter, then NO date is displayed whatsoever when there is no EXIF date:
Guido,
Maybe it's the version.
I have Graphic Converter 11 and it definitely displays a date even if no EXIF DATE is present and I had selected EXIF date in preferences.
You probably have version 12. The user interface in your screenshots is different.
I remember the selection was different in previous versions.
In the right click popup under Show below Preview there was a large sub-popup list with available options.
Apparently this was too difficult to manage.
Now there is only an entry which leads to the corresponding settings page as shown above.
Apparently there were similar requests which caused the modification in GraphicConverter.
That's why I recommend that should such modification come in DOpus as well, the current option should be retained.
Perhaps it is still available somewhere in GraphicConverter as well, I just haven't looked closely. Using DOpus still more frequently...
Perhaps because of the complications mentioned above.
I have pretty much confidence in the general file modification date and handle it very carefully, particularly preserving it when losslessly transforming JPEG images.
Many people prefer to keep not only all extra markers, but also the timestamp of the transformed file in the filesystem. So the default setting for this switch is on. In the off state the written file gets the creation timestamp as usual.
Unfortunately, the corresponding jpegtran commandline utility does not (yet) provide such option, because it requires a bit more effort for cross-platform use. jpegtran offers some even more special features which I need occasionally.
Some time ago I found a suitable solution for this problem:
There is a well-known Unix command touch to manipulate file timestamps.
But I need it on Windows where it isn't normally available, and I didn't want to install some patchwork.
When I installed the well-established C++Builder compiler and IDE (Integrated Development Environment), I noticed that they had properly ported some of such Unix tools which are useful to Windows, particularly touch and grep (file search).
Since I have C++Builder installed anyway, I have now also always touch available:
C:\Users\guido>touch
Touch Version 5.0 Copyright (c) 1995-2010 Embarcadero Technologies, Inc.
Usage: TOUCH [options] [filename(s)...] (wild cards * and ? ok)
-c don't create file
-D allow directory names to be touched (when wildcards specified)
-h prints this help screen (-h2 for expanded help)
-rfilename set to same date/time as 'filename'
-s recurse through subdirectories
-thh:mm[:ss] set the file time
-dmm/dd/yy set the file date
-h detailed help
What I need here is just the -r option: set to same date/time as 'filename'.
So now I can perform my special jpegtran operations (which can't be done with Jpegcrop), often several sequentially, and finally reset the timestamp to the original.
You see this in the GraphicConverter screenshots above where I derived several cropped images from one original for the purpose of desktop background fitting the screen size exactly, and also omitting the EXIF there.
However, when I posted the first shot, I noticed that one of these images did not have the proper timestamp.
This was the one which required additional jpegtran magic, and at that time I did not have the touch solution yet. I have then applied the touch command to the file and replicated and reuploaded the screenshot, so that all files have proper timestamps now.
The respective image is a look from my balcony, to date!
Another case for careful handling of timestamp is download.
In many cases where this matters for me I don't download from the web browser, but I just copy the link and paste it to curl -R -O in the command prompt, which preserves the timestamp from the remote server! I have not seen a web browser doing this. curl is standard on Windows (10+ I think) and many other operating systems.
Also, please, an option to show what (sub) folder the image is in. When searching for images, DO shows all results, including subfolders sorted by name. The details/details+thumbnails does show location, but having that info in thumbnail view would make my life at least 0.0002% easier. Thanks.
Guido,
I work with clients' photo and video collections. To get the files, I need to copy them, download them, export them, or move them to drives with a different format - things than can cause a File\System date to change. so I cannot rely on the File/System Date Created or the File/System Date Modified.
They are what I can 'unstable' dates.
