Changing the EXIF

travelways

Well, this can be a very delicate subject...

I was just wondering if you guys are aware of this software
that allows people to modify the EXIF of photos, even the date...

I did a simple search by curiosity, a couple days before and this is what I found:

http://www.digital-photo-software-guide.com/exif-editor.html

....

"Zoner Photo Studio, a photo viewer and editor with some good EXIF editor abilities.
It is a user friendly photo viewer, album and photo editor that let you edit or modify the EXIF fields Author, Title, Copyright, Description, Time/date created, Time/date digitized, ISO, Exposure time, Aperture, IPTC fields, even in a batch process."

Sorry to post this, but I think it's good to know about... :rolleyes

DoctorIt

Kiki wrote:

Well, this can be a very delicate subject...

I was just wondering if you guys are aware of this software
that allows people to modify the EXIF of photos, even the date...

I did a simple search by curiosity, a couple days before and this is what I found:

http://www.digital-photo-software-guide.com/exif-editor.html

....

"Zoner Photo Studio, a photo viewer and editor with some good EXIF editor abilities.
It is a user friendly photo viewer, album and photo editor that let you edit or modify the EXIF fields Author, Title, Copyright, Description, Time/date created, Time/date digitized, ISO, Exposure time, Aperture, IPTC fields, even in a batch process."

Sorry to post this, but I think it's good to know about...

I hope after tomorrow I never see another post about exif!!!


stay tuned....
:hide


But, yes, Kiki, of course we know that in a digital world, anything is possible. It's a photo competition, not a presidential election so we can hide in our puffy honest clouds and not lose too much sleep.

Tango

oh my..... whats a' going on here'a??

i guess i should tune in tomorrow...

travelways

DoctorIt wrote:

I hope after tomorrow I never see another post about exif!!!

But, yes, Kiki, of course we know that in a digital world, anything is possible. It's a photo competition, not a presidential election so we can hide in our puffy honest clouds and not lose too much sleep.

So... there were other posts about EXIF... I was not aware of any, but of course, I'm new to photography...

vintagemxr

Paint Shop Pro X2 has the ability to change the EXIF image creation date. I'd seen the option before but never paid much attention. I just took a cull photo and changed the creation date to 12.28.08 and it now shows the 12.28 date and a "last modified" date of 12.14.08. Never occured to me that it was anything but some sort of a file management tool.



Doug

Benjer

And I'm still stumped, trying to understand why the "Date Taken" and "Date Modified" times are different on my SOOC shots, when I made no modifications! It appears that transferring the image file from the CF card to my HD is a "modification." But others' EXIF data shows identical Taken vs Modified times. Why is mine different???

Perplexed (and hoping I'm not disqualified!)

pyry

vintagemxr wrote:

Paint Shop Pro X2 has the ability to change the EXIF image creation date. I'd seen the option before but never paid much attention. I just took a cull photo and changed the creation date to 12.28.08 and it now shows the 12.28 date and a "last modified" date of 12.14.08. Never occured to me that it was anything but some sort of a file management tool.



Doug

A lot of imaging programs can modify exifs. This is mostly about being able to correct for the situations where the camera's clock has been off, either reset or in the wrong time zone. I recently changed the capture times on a set of photos because there were two of us photographers and our cameras weren't set to the same time - and therefore showed up in a wonky order when I did the final pp and selections.

Obviously, fiddling with exifs just to make it fit a round of DSS is cheating. If your picture is old, put it in a mini challenge and go shoot something new - you might learn something while you're at it.

Pat664422

Benjer,

I noticed the same thing with my entry and don't understand it either. I posted a thread about it hoping to make sure I wouldn't get disqualified and no one seemed to think it was a big deal. If it makes you feel any better, I guess if you go down, I'll be going down with you.

pyry

Benjer wrote:

And I'm still stumped, trying to understand why the "Date Taken" and "Date Modified" times are different on my SOOC shots, when I made no modifications! It appears that transferring the image file from the CF card to my HD is a "modification." But others' EXIF data shows identical Taken vs Modified times. Why is mine different???

Perplexed (and hoping I'm not disqualified!)

You should be fine I think. Something as simple as copying the file can show as a modification. An explanation for the entries with identical dates might be, say, uploading right off the card. I pretty sure this level of pedanticness isn't a requirement

Gastrocnemius

Pedanticness ?

Surely, you meant 'pedantry'.




(sorry)

pyry

Gastrocnemius wrote:

Pedanticness ?

Surely, you meant 'pedantry'.

Apparently I did

ic4u

Benjer wrote:

And I'm still stumped, trying to understand why the "Date Taken" and "Date Modified" times are different on my SOOC shots, when I made no modifications! It appears that transferring the image file from the CF card to my HD is a "modification." But others' EXIF data shows identical Taken vs Modified times. Why is mine different???

Perplexed (and hoping I'm not disqualified!)

Is it possible that you did a "save as" when you gave it a file name? I did that on the last SOOC on a picture I didn't submit, but noticed that it changed the modification date. Just a thought

richtersl

Pat664422 wrote:

Benjer,

I noticed the same thing with my entry and don't understand it either. I posted a thread about it hoping to make sure I wouldn't get disqualified and no one seemed to think it was a big deal. If it makes you feel any better, I guess if you go down, I'll be going down with you.

I wonder if that date-thing is something specific to both your Nikons? I have a Canon and on my exif the create and modify time stamps are identical. All I did was copy the pic from my card to my HD. Literally. I did not go through any 3rd party software to copy it to my HD.

For the last SOOC challenge I entered a photo that I shot in RAW and then converted to JPEG format so therefore the create and modify time stamps were different. I was not DQ'd for that. Apparently a few others had done the same thing but we were in the minority. I remember Emily mentioning that resizing a photo and/or converting to JPEG from RAW were acceptable edits because you were not modyfing the picture itself. I think that you guys will be OK.


Why on earth have these software propeller-heads allowed the create and modify time stamps to be editable?

divamum

Gastrocnemius wrote:

Pedanticness ?

Surely, you meant 'pedantry'.
(sorry)

(psssstt Our beloved Pyry is not, believe it or not, a native English speaker, and he's too modest to mention it unless you ask. That we could all write in Finnish as he does in our language!! )

anonymouscuban

I had the same issue

Benjer wrote:

And I'm still stumped, trying to understand why the "Date Taken" and "Date Modified" times are different on my SOOC shots, when I made no modifications! It appears that transferring the image file from the CF card to my HD is a "modification." But others' EXIF data shows identical Taken vs Modified times. Why is mine different???

Perplexed (and hoping I'm not disqualified!)

For some reason, my images for SOOC had different Date Taken and Date Modified dates. The wierdest thing is that the Date Modified time was before the Date Taken time... go figure.

BTW, I checked the date/time on my camera and it's fine. Same on my puter.

richtersl

anonymouscuban wrote:

For some reason, my images for SOOC had different Date Taken and Date Modified dates. The wierdest thing is that the Date Modified time was before the Date Taken time... go figure.

BTW, I checked the date/time on my camera and it's fine. Same on my puter.

You also have a Nikon, my friend. It's looking more and more to be something peculiar to that make of camera.

anonymouscuban

richtersl wrote:

You also have a Nikon, my friend. It's looking more and more to be something peculiar to that make of camera.

Quite possible. Now I'm curious... I am going to do some playing around with this to try to find the root cause.

JDouglas

anonymouscuban wrote:

Quite possible. Now I'm curious... I am going to do some playing around with this to try to find the root cause.

I also shoot Nikon. D70. My date-time stamps are identical.

For the SOOC, I shot RAW+jpg, transferred to computer using a card reader, and uploaded the .jpg to Smugmug.

pyry

divamum wrote:

(psssstt Our beloved Pyry is not, believe it or not, a native English speaker, and he's too modest to mention it unless you ask. That we could all write in Finnish as he does in our language!! )

Thanks

I have an advantage there, English is easier to learn than Finnish - which I've heard described as alien gibberish.

vintagemxr

pyry wrote:

A lot of imaging programs can modify exifs. This is mostly about being able to correct for the situations where the camera's clock has been off, either reset or in the wrong time zone. I recently changed the capture times on a set of photos because there were two of us photographers and our cameras weren't set to the same time - and therefore showed up in a wonky order when I did the final pp and selections.

Obviously, fiddling with exifs just to make it fit a round of DSS is cheating. If your picture is old, put it in a mini challenge and go shoot something new - you might learn something while you're at it.

'scuse me? I hope that last paragraph wasn't directed at me personally. Ah wait, I see that English isn't your first language. Might be a English grammer issue there. I work for a multi-national company and I always tell my colleagues that their English is better than my German/Spanish/Portuguese/Chinese or whatever. Translating thoughts from one language to another is fraught with errors, sometimes hilarious ones.

Resetting photo dates to match a specific date for some legitimate business or editing reason or another makes sense. Editing EXIF to cheat on a contest, minor or major, seems like foolish thing to. Reputations for honesty are easily lost and very tough to get back. Some in national politics are in the process of finding that out and I'm sure the DGrin family would be tougher to fool or live with than Congress, the media, and the voting public.

:hang

Come to think of it, I value the honest opinions of people here more than I do those aforementioned groups!

Doug

richtersl

pyry wrote:

Thanks

I have an advantage there, English is easier to learn than Finnish - which I've heard described as alien gibberish.

To add to Pyry's comment Finnish sounds like jibberish because it's not related to any other languages spoken in Europe (except Estonian and Hungarian).

There are no gender nouns like "he" or "she", which simplify things somewhat but then, everything and everyone is an "it".

liflander

richtersl wrote:

To add to Pyry's comment Finnish sounds like jibberish because it's not related to any other languages spoken in Europe (except Estonian and Hungarian).

There are no gender nouns like "he" or "she", which simplify things somewhat but then, everything and everyone is an "it".

How do you say EXIF in Finnish?

divamum

liflander wrote:

How do you say EXIF in Finnish?

Presumably something like "ellllxiiiiiifyy" (Finnish always seems to be i's, l's and y's) :giggle

richtersl

liflander wrote:

How do you say EXIF in Finnish?

No letter "x" in the Finnish alphabet. So I guess it would be "eksif". Come to think of it, I don't think there's an "f", either..... In that case it would be "eksiv". But then, Finns often like to add extra vowels at the end, so then it would become "eskiviä".

I'm sure that Pyry will chime in with the correct answer.

Tango

DoctorIt wrote:

I hope after tomorrow I never see another post about exif!!!

.

oh i do believe we can always dig up the past....:D

pyry

vintagemxr wrote:

'scuse me? I hope that last paragraph wasn't directed at me personally.

Doug

Sorry Doug! That was meant for the world in general.

travelways

I started this thread hoping to get a clarification from DGrin Challenges authorities on the subject
of cheating by modifying the EXIF and also to learn about others opinions on this.

I certainly didn't need a lesson in the Finnish vs. English language, please... English is not my native language either,
but I hope this will not make any difference in this community...

Should I start a new thread on this subject?

Going back, it seems that according to DoctorIt, changing the EXIF(mainly concerning the time) - on a photography during a challenge
is an insignificant detail, since we are not competing for the "presidential election".

Why then the rules in the contest mention the opposite: "the image should be fresh taken during the time of the contest"

In addition, on this specific contest the time was very important because no alterations were allowed -

I'm not talking about those who had problems downloading their images to the computer, etc... it's out or my technical knowledge.

I'm talking about the possibility of cheating by tweaking the images to get a better quality while making them look fresh and unaltered, intentionally.

ic4u

Kiki wrote:

I started this thread hoping to get a clarification from DGrin Challenges authorities on the subject
of cheating by modifying the EXIF and also to learn about others opinions on this.

If you look back at previous threads, you will see this topic has been brought up on numerous occasions, and it all boils down to "the honor system". If someone feels the need to cheat their exif info for a photography competition, well that doesn't say much for them.

pyry

Kiki wrote:

I'm not talking about those who had problems downloading their images to the computer, etc... it's out or my technical knowledge.

I'm talking about the possibility of cheating by tweaking the images to get a better quality while making them look fresh and unaltered, intentionally.

It's probably out of the technical knowledge of nearly all of us. If we started to require identical capture and modification times, there would be a flood of DQs.

Even with elaborate precautions like providing originals (which would make taking part in the challenge something to consider very hard because of the possibility of the original escaping control and takes the mods' workload off the scale), it would still boil down to the honour system.

Tango

it comes down to this:

you can cheat, anyone can cheat, we all know this... it is not new news...

theres more than one way to tell a cheat other than exif....

the point is, EXIF is not going to be an issue any longer to worry about...

who/what/where????...we are waiting for the new news, just hang tight...

dont get offended and ruffled your thread was taken over....its happend to all of us...

Kiki wrote:

I started this thread hoping to get a clarification from DGrin Challenges authorities on the subject
of cheating by modifying the EXIF and also to learn about others opinions on this.

I certainly didn't need a lesson in the Finnish vs. English language, please... English is not my native language either,
but I hope this will not make any difference in this community...

Should I start a new thread on this subject?

Going back, it seems that according to DoctorIt, changing the EXIF(mainly concerning the time) - on a photography during a challenge
is an insignificant detail, since we are not competing for the "presidential election".

Why then the rules in the contest mention the opposite: "the image should be fresh taken during the time of the contest"

In addition, on this specific contest the time was very important because no alterations were allowed -

I'm not talking about those who had problems downloading their images to the computer, etc... it's out or my technical knowledge.

I'm talking about the possibility of cheating by tweaking the images to get a better quality while making them look fresh and unaltered, intentionally.

Greensquared

Entry gallery = no more exif worries :ivar

Honor system = no more exif worries

No more exif worries = mods much happier campers to run this thing

Cheaters = you have to live with your own cold, sinful heart

Now please, let's focus on the fun stuff, worry less about the not-fun stuff and get shooting.

With all of these recent changes and the awesome community efforts, I'm really excited about my role here again - and that, my friends is a wonderful thing!!!