Dates & locations
The two fields people come to a metadata editor for, and the two that are most painful to fix anywhere else.
Setting a date directly
Click DateTimeOriginal, CreateDate, or ModifyDate and a calendar with a time input appears. Precision goes to the second. Invalid dates are rejected before they can become a pending change.
Use this when you know the answer — a scan of a print marked July 1974, or a video whose real capture time you have from another source.
Shifting dates by an offset
Use an offset when the dates are wrong by a consistent amount, which is nearly always the case with a camera.
- Select the files you want to adjust.
- Click any date field, then Apply Offset.
- Enter the shift in days, hours, minutes, and seconds. Negative values move backwards, and you can combine units in one operation.
- Check the preview — it shows the exact resulting timestamp before anything is applied.
- Click Apply. The offset becomes a pending change on every selected file.
An offset moves every timestamp by the same amount, so the intervals between shots survive. Photographs taken twelve seconds apart stay twelve seconds apart — which is what keeps a burst in order, and a day's shooting in the sequence it happened.
Common cases
| Situation | Offset |
|---|---|
| Shot in Tokyo with the camera still on New York time | +14 hours |
| Camera clock two days ahead after a battery swap | −2 days |
| Body that has always run three minutes fast | −3 minutes |
| Second body an hour behind the first | +1 hour, applied to that camera's group |
Group by camera first (see Grouping) and a mixed shoot becomes two clean selections, each with its own offset.
The whole offset is one undoable action: Ctrl+Z reverses it across every file at once.
Setting a location
By coordinates
Edit GPSLatitude, GPSLongitude, and GPSAltitude individually. Latitude is validated to −90…90 and longitude to −180…180, and the N/S/E/W reference fields are derived for you rather than being something else to get wrong.
On the map
Click the map preview in the metadata panel to open the full map editor, then click the spot. The marker and the coordinate fields stay in sync in both directions — drag the map, the numbers update; type a number, the marker moves.
By place name
Type a place into the search box — "Fushimi Inari", a street address, a town — and pick from the results. Results are navigable with the arrow keys and Enter. Search is debounced, so typing doesn't fire a request per keystroke.
Map tiles come from OpenStreetMap and geocoding from Nominatim, both free and neither requiring an API key. See what leaves your machine.
Copying a location to other files
Most photographs from one place should carry the same coordinates. Set one, then reuse it.
- Select a file that already has the position you want and choose Copy GPS.
- Pick a format from the dropdown — each goes to your system clipboard, so you can also paste it into a message or a spreadsheet.
- Select the files that need it and click Paste. Pasting to several files asks for confirmation first, and tells you which file the coordinates came from.
| Format | Example |
|---|---|
| Human readable | 37.774900° N, 122.419400° W, 10.50m |
| Decimal | 37.774900, -122.419400, 10.50 |
| Degrees / minutes / seconds | 37°46'29.6"N 122°25'9.8"W |
| Google Maps link | https://www.google.com/maps?q=37.774900,-122.419400 |
A paste transfers the complete set of GPS fields — latitude, longitude, altitude, and the reference fields — not just the two obvious numbers.
Pasting a location onto a multi-file selection is part of batch editing, which is a Pro capability. Copying, and pasting to a single file, work in Free.
Seeing several locations at once
Select two or more files with coordinates and the map switches to multi-marker mode:
- Each file gets its own colour, from a palette of eight
- The map zooms to fit every marker automatically
- Clicking a marker shows that file's name and position
- A legend ties colours to filenames, with a count of how many of the selected files actually have GPS data
Multi-marker mode is read-only on purpose — it exists for checking your work across a trip, not for dragging pins around by accident. Selecting a single file returns you to the editable single-marker view.