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I have many screenshots from video games over the years that I want to convert while maintaining their timestamps so I can keep them chronologically organized with other images.

I've already used an image converter, but it resets their date attributes.

DavidPostill
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Milo
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  • you may also try your luck at https://webapps.stackexchange.com/ – jiggunjer Dec 19 '15 at 16:32
  • Sorry I should be more specific then, I used an external tool to convert the bmp to png, but I need a tool that can do these conversions and maintain other data. It's not especially a google photos problem since I did not use google photos to convert them. – Milo Dec 19 '15 at 16:45
  • I see, that's good info to include. – jiggunjer Dec 19 '15 at 16:46
  • did you check https://superuser.com/questions/12924/changing-the-date-of-a-image-file – jiggunjer Dec 19 '15 at 16:48
  • I don't know how that can help, these are just .bmp screenshots, I don't think they have any EXIF data. – Milo Dec 19 '15 at 16:58
  • https://superuser.com/questions/292630/how-can-i-change-the-timestamp-on-a-file – jiggunjer Dec 19 '15 at 17:41
  • @jiggunjer I appreciate the time you've spent trying to find a solution. I can't manually edit the dates because they are about 800 over many years. – Milo Dec 19 '15 at 19:10
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    you can do it all with a powershell script. for each file: get `lastwritetime` of bmp and store it in a variable, then use variable to set `lastwritetime` of the corresponding png. – jiggunjer Dec 19 '15 at 19:28
  • @jiggunjer Thank you for that suggestion. I'm using the IrfanView solution described below as it's the simplest. Your powershell solution might be useful in future since these images were previously zipped, and unzipping them reset their creation date, but not their modified date, which is the actual original creation timestamp. I will see how google photos sorts these and if it's not correct I will use your solution to overwrite their dates, thanks again. – Milo Dec 20 '15 at 18:46

2 Answers2

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The batch conversion function of IrfanView has an advanced option to keep date and time.

  • Use File/Batch Conversion.
  • Select the pictures you would like to convert.
  • Mark 'use advanced options'.
    There is a button ' Advanced', which will open a window with the converting options.
  • Under MISCELLANEOUS use the option 'Save files with original date/time'.
Joachim
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Jens Mundhenke
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This powershell script might do the job:

#copy timestamp from files in folder A to files in folder B.

#user file folders (default assumes powershell script is in parent folder of both A and B)
$A = ".\bmp" #source
$B = ".\png" #target

$count = 0
$B_content = ls $B

foreach($file in ls $A){
    $otherfile = $B_content[$count]
    $otherfile.LastWriteTime=$file.LastWriteTime;
    $count++
}
jiggunjer
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