Photo has lost all camera properties

[LizzieL]

Can I restore them manually?
I was looking at a set of photographs which my husband and I took a few years ago. I want to order them chronologically by date and time taken, but one picture has lost all its camera properties. I had done a little editing - just brightening it up slightly, but I had done the same to several other pictures in the set and they still have all their properties. Does anyone know if I can get the properties back and if so how?. It's annoying to have this one picture out of time sequence.

[Zaphod99]

Search for photo metadata editing software.

Zaph

[Andy J2022]

Unlike the process usually employed to delete a file, where just the file name is corrupted in the file allocation table, when Exif data is deleted, it is usually done by replacing all the data fields with zeros, which means the data cannot be recovered. To be really sure if the data has been deleted, use a metadata viewing program, as zaphod suggested. EXIFdata.org being typical of the genre. Occasionally programs like Windows fail to show Exif data after a change, such as an edit.

[LizzieL]

I've tried a metadata viewing program (Irfanview), it just shows there's nothing there. Then I tried Exifdata.org as you suggested and it replaced the blank for date taken with today's date, so now the image is at the other end of my list and still out of sequence. As the set of photos was taken with two different cameras (therefore two different sets of image file numbers), I can't just order them according to name.

[Zaphod99]

I would guess that there would be an option in that program to let you manually enter a date, rather than inserting today's date. I think I've used it in the past, but I can't specifically remember, but I worked in IT all my life and I would expect it to work as I just suggested.

If you have lots of photographs with the same date, there are likely to be ways to automate the process, or at the very least, type the date once, copy it, and then just repeatedly insert it as required.

Zaph

[LizzieL]

I did enter date and time (the photos either side of it were two minutes difference, so I knew the time) but it wouldn't save.

[Biggles50]

Have you the iCloud active?

If not do you have any Backup system in place?

[Tickettyboo]

I use Photos on an iMac. Some of the photos are scans of physical ones and I too wanted them to include a date and time that reflects when it was taken rather than when the scan file was created

open a photo from the thumbnail in the app
click the info icon top right
double click on the date and time that shows
that opens a window which allows you to adjust the date and time

Boo

[Biggles50]

With the Image open in Photos from the Top Menu select Image > Adjust Date and Time.

This is using Sequoia 15.6.1 on our MacBook.