ExifTool’s if functionality makes this easy to fix: exiftool '-createdateCreateDate Exif Property to a Picture Ryan M provides more insight into finding and fixing images with no exif dates.

The picture does not have the DateTimeOriginal exif property if its file name is returned. If you have a folder of pictures to check, or even a folder contaning even more folders of pictures, you can simply replace /path/to/picture.jpg with /path/to/picture/directory/: exiftool -filename -r -if '(not $datetimeoriginal)' /path/to/picture/directory/ In this example, I want to see if my picture has the DateTimeOriginal exif property set: exiftool -filename -r -if '(not $datetimeoriginal)' /path/to/picture.jpg You can quickly figure out if a picture is missing a particular exif property by running the following command. If you are in a directory with many pictures that you want to scrub the exif data from, you can use a wildcard to process them all: exiftool -all= *.jpg You can do this with the following command: exiftool -all= picture.jpg If you are uploading a picture to a public website, it would be wise to scrub any exif properties - especially if there are GPS exif properties. This post will be an ever growing list of useful exiftool commands and scripts. It is especially useful when you have a lot of pictures to edit and have no desire to change metadata by hand. ExifTool by Phil Harvey is a fantastic tool to edit the exif metadata on your pictures.

Exiftool video