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I am trying to upload several png files (screenshots) to google photos. As PNG does not have DateTimeOriginal tag, I have used CreationTime tag to store the date taken information copied from the date created tag (FileCreateDate) as follows.

exiftool "-PNG:CreationTime<FileCreateDate" .

However, this is not recognized by google photos and it shows the upload date as the date taken.

Is there any exif/png tag for PNG files where the date taken information can be stored so that it will be recognized by google-photos?

For JPEG, It is DateTimeOriginal.

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3 Answers 3

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PNG metadata is poorly supported by most software, but it looks like in this case, Google has started supporting EXIF data in PNG, which it did not in my previous tests.

If you write to the EXIF:DateTimeOriginal in a PNG, Google photos will correctly read the date/time, at least in my test. It also seemed to support other data written to the EXIF group, including GPS.

PNG:CreationTime still seems to be the proper place to write the date for Windows to read it.

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In my experience, I write AllDates and CreationTime to png, with no luck.

exiftool -alldates=20200306_111111 -creationdate=20200306_111111 somefile.png

But touch success.

touch -t 202003061111.11 somefile.png

The touch command changed the File Modification Date/Time, and Google Photos display pictures in right order.

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Here in 2022 I am not seeing the accepted answer (from @StarGeek) work anymore. However, after some experimentation I found what did cause it to work.

When I modify the Date/Time Original field of a .png photo (using exiftool) as well as the Create Date and Modify Date fields and then upload to Google Photos, Google Photos does not correctly display the date that the picture was taken. Exif data for the photo Google Photos data for the photo

However, the field Google Photos uses is the File Modification Date/Time, which is the date that the operating system labels the picture as last being modified.

So you can modify the File Modification Date/Time by using the exiftool -filemodifydate command.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Confirmed this solution still works flawlessly as of April 2023. I used the following command to modify the File Modification Date/Time on a batch of PNG screenshots: exiftool "-FileModifyDate<EXIF:DateTimeOriginal" *.png \$\endgroup\$
    – sharptooth
    Apr 9 at 6:33

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