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I have a problem importing some P340 raw images into LR5. The issue is that the camera date appears to have been set wrong. (I say appears to as most images are correct, but some - around midnight 31/12/14 - and Ill post separate question about that).

I can use Metadata / Edit capture date but that will only update the DNG files not the source NRW files. Also I dont know how to then move the images in the LR Library to the correct date folder.

So, my first question is:
Is there a good free or cheap editor to edit the .nrw files directly?
(Just the capture date in this case).
Win Explorer doesnt "see" this field.
The root solution as it were would be to fix the nrw files and reimport them.

Absent that, my second question is:
would the following work - remove the images; turn off the DNG conversion; re-import; fix the dates; write metadata to the files; remove the images; turn DNG back on; re-import?

My third question is:
Is there a better way?

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Does this answer your question? help.adobe.com/en_US/lightroom/using/… \$\endgroup\$
    – Rene
    Feb 23, 2015 at 7:36
  • \$\begingroup\$ Perhaps I wasn't clear enough in my question. Yes I had seen hat page (or the LR5) equivalent. It doesnt solve the problem directly, only via a rather involved process. I will edit the question to be more specific what Im asking. \$\endgroup\$
    – RFlack
    Feb 23, 2015 at 12:01

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Phil Harvey's ExifTool works on NRW files and will do the job for you. It's a command line tool, but it's very powerful and will save you a lot of manual work.

If you can determine the difference in the time on the camera vs. the current time, ExifTool can adjust the time embedded in the file by that amount. For example, if the camera is 3 hours, 14 minutes and 15 seconds behind where it should be, this will bump the time ahead by that much:

exiftool.exe "-DateTimeOriginal+=0:0:0 3:14:15" filename.nrw

Similarly, if the camera was ahead, change the += to -= and ExifTool will subtract that much from the time instead of adding to it. The 0:0:0 is years, months and days.

If you have a directory full of NRWs that need changing, *.nrw will operate on all of them.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Thanks. Ive looked at the ExifTool web page. Im pretty new to this stuff, so I have a couple of 'newbie' questions. 1. How can I be sure it handles P340 NRW files Ok? I dont see a list of supported cameras 2. There seem to be a lot of "dates" associated with image files. I THINK Im concerned with Date Created, Date Modified (in Windows parlance), and critically what I think LR5 calls Creation Date, which it uses for example in determining target folder on import, and also Capture Time (is that the same thing or different?) I need to be sure I access and adjust the correct "dates". \$\endgroup\$
    – RFlack
    Feb 23, 2015 at 18:22
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    \$\begingroup\$ ExifTool doesn't support cameras, it supports file formats that contain EXIF data. I've been using it for over a decade and haven't known it to not work with anything it claims to support. If you run exiftool filename.nrw, it will dump out the tags in the file. You can use that to figure out what tags your camera sets and see the effects of changes. You'll want to tinker with copies of a few files while you get it figured out. It's a very powerful tool, and like powerful tools, it has a learning curve. You'll get there. \$\endgroup\$
    – Blrfl
    Feb 23, 2015 at 18:54
  • \$\begingroup\$ Many thanks. The assumption is that everyone, specifically Nikon, follows EXIF exactly? I must have misread the docs as it looks like it will edit more than EXIF, eg XMP data as well. \$\endgroup\$
    – RFlack
    Feb 23, 2015 at 23:27
  • \$\begingroup\$ @RFlack: It's very rare that a manufacturer doesn't follow the standard, especially for the basics. EXIF also includes escape hatches for vendor-specific data, some of which ExifTool understands. \$\endgroup\$
    – Blrfl
    Feb 23, 2015 at 23:40

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