How to fix picture’s Date Taken

Ever downloaded your vacation pictures from your digital camera, just to discover that the Date Taken tag is wrong? There is a solution for that! You just need python, shell script and probably Linux skills, and ten minutes to spare.

The following lines will do the magic for you:

import pyexiv2
from datetime import timedelta
import sys

metadata = pyexiv2.ImageMetadata(sys.argv[1])
metadata.read()
tag = metadata['Exif.Image.DateTime']
if tag.value.year == 2011:
   tag.value += timedelta(days=366)
   metadata.write()

To keep things simple, I just assumed that you will run this script with the jpeg image as a parameter, and the pictures appear to be taken last year (happened to me).

To fix all the pictures in a folder, simply run this oneline:

for i in *.JPG; do python fix.py $i; done

There you go!

Later Edit: you would probably also want to change Exif.Photo.DateTimeOriginal and Exif.Photo.DateTimeDigitized tags.