Exporting and handling images directly

That wouldn't be 'exporting'... Why do you need this? It looks like it might be better to use something else for it.

P.S. 'Export with Preset - Original' does not change the creation date (but it does change the modification date)...

JohanElzenga said:

That wouldn't be 'exporting'... Why do you need this? It looks like it might be better to use something else for it.

Click to expand...

I see what you mean. Wrong definition on my part.
I need to add EXIF date/time headers to images missing them (scanned images etc.) using various external scripts and tools so their dates won't get mangled by LR and thus lost forever when their metadata is saved (an entirely different discussion, already adressed by myself and others, but apparently not acknowledged by Adobe). So I need to work on those files directly so I can "fix" them.
I've been able to locate them within LR (I think I used a plugin someone suggested to me, then created a collection from the search results), so if I could access those files directly my problems would be solved.
As I'm working on a drag & drop script to be placed in the OSX dock I've been wondering if I could select all the affected files in LR, then drag and drop them into the script's dock icon to process them. Early testing indicated that this might work, but I'm not entirely sure and thought I'd ask here first.

Other suggestions on how to do this outside of LR are welcome of course. If I could use OSX's smart-search function in the Finder based on the criteria of "missing time/date EXIF header" to list all the affected files I could from then on process them all with my script, but alas there's no such attribute available.

P.S. 'Export with Preset - Original' does not change the creation date (but it does change the modification date)...

Click to expand...

I haven't been able to reproduce this. Even with "original" both creation and modification dates are set to the current time/date. I see you're on a Mac as well, so that can't be the reason (I've read that the LR file creation date overwriting only affects Mac users and not those with the Windows version of LR).

Why don't you move all those images inside Lightroom to a newly created folder? Then you can run your scripts on that entire folder. Create a new folder by clicking on the plus sign in the folder panel, then select all the images in your collection and drag and drop them onto that folder.

Again a good suggestion, but my photos are all organized physically in sub-folders by subject so that would mess everything up.
I'll do some more testing to see if drag & drop from LR itself would work as intended.

process said:

Again a good suggestion, but my photos are all organized physically in sub-folders by subject so that would mess everything up.
I'll do some more testing to see if drag & drop from LR itself would work as intended.

Click to expand...

Any operation that you can do in Finder/Explorer can be done in the LR Folder panel with the exception of the COPY operation. Changes made inside LR update the LR catalog. Changes made in Finder/Explorer do not update the catalog.
COPY is not an acceptable process in LR because it is unnecessary and redundant since there is no need to duplicate original files.

process said:

Again a good suggestion, but my photos are all organized physically in sub-folders by subject so that would mess everything up.

Click to expand...

Then do it folder by folder, and move them back after you've ran your scripts and before you move the next batch...

clee01l said:

Any operation that you can do in Finder/Explorer can be done in the LR Folder panel with the exception of the COPY operation. Changes made inside LR update the LR catalog.

Click to expand...

Thanks for confirming this. This seems to be correct based on yet another LR test I just performed:
I created a new LR catalog with images spread across various sub-folders. I then colour-labeled (rated) some of these in LR (for identification purposes) and dragged the colour-labeled ones over to my test script (which added a colour label and renamed the file). Sure enough; only those images I had dragged over (regardless of being in the same folder or not) were affected!
So theoretically it shouldn't work any differently with a more advanced script (creating an EXIF date-tag to images not already having one, copying the file creation date over to that EXIF date tag, and (possibly with a separate script later) copy the EXIF date tag over to the file-creation date).

Changes made in Finder/Explorer do not update the catalog

Click to expand...

Do the EXIF date tags work in the same way as everything else or are they read and stored in the cache?
If the former is true I assume I can synchronize my folders within LR to reflect those changes.

COPY is not an acceptable process in LR because it is unnecessary and redundant since there is no need to duplicate original files.

Click to expand...

So that's why I'm able to do the above (drag & drop files over to a script) but not drag images from LR over to the desktop (in order to make exported copies) I guess.
Why my images have their creation dates changed when exported is however still a mystery.

You don't need an external script to add an exif date. Lightroom can do that. It has an option to change the capture date / time, for example if you forgot to change the time zone. You can also add a date / time if there is none, for example in a scanned image, if I'm not mistaken.

JohanElzenga said:

You don't need an external script to add an exif date. Lightroom can do that. It has an option to change the capture date / time, for example if you forgot to change the time zone. You can also add a date / time if there is none, for example in a scanned image, if I'm not mistaken.

Click to expand...

You're right (Metadata-Edit capture time-Change to file's creation date menu). Although I need to complete my script (so I can add an EXIF date tag to newly scanned images) this is indeed very interesting stuff I'll look into.