JPG and HEIC photos will contain EXIF metadata which gives information about the time and date the photo was taken, the phone/camera model used to take it, and the technical settings such as focal length and ISO speed. You can view the EXIF date/time and other fields using an ordinary Gallery app on your phone or using a specialist program on your computer.
Usually the date will be accurate but there are some circumstances when you might need to double-check, for example if the EXIF date/time is inconsistent with the state of outside vegetation captured in the photo - e.g. if it shows a summertime date when the photo, taken in England, shows leafless trees, flower beds with no flowers, and patches of snow on the ground. Or it might be that someone known to you - such as a child - is in the photo and they appear to be much older or younger than you would expect based on the EXIF date/time.
A possible explanation for an apparently incorrect EXIF date/time would be that the photo might have been taken with a digital camera whose internal clock has been manually set to the wrong date. You can check to see whether the date is the same as the GPS Date Stamp (which is set automatically from GPS satellite signals). It is usual for GPS Time Stamp to differ from from the time in the date/time field by a few minutes because, to save battery power, it is not updated constantly, but a different date would indicate that EXIF date/time is based on a clock which has been wrongly set. You should add to the name of the photo (filename or name assigned within a document management system) an explanation:
Document Description
Photo of garden (EXIF date inaccurate - GPS datestamp used) - IMG_1234
If no GPS datestamp is recorded you have to estimate the year or approximate year of the photo and you should add to the name of the photo (filename or name assigned within a document management system) an indication that there is EXIF data but it is believed to be inaccurate:
Document Description
Photo of garden (EXIF date inaccurate) - IMG_1234
Sometimes you may come across an example of a JPG or HEIC photo where there are no EXIF tags. This may be because the JPG (or HEIC) was sent to you by someone else using an instant messaging system which did a "lossy" compression of the images and removed the EXIF tags, or you might be using a copy of a file on your computer which was copied from your phone using a method which did not preserve EXIF data. In this case the first thing to do is to see whether you have, elsewhere, another copy of the JPG/HEIC file with intact EXIF data.
If you cannot find a copy with intact EXIF data, or if the JPG (or HEIC file) was sent to you by a company which has removed the EXIF tags - such as a company providing aerial photographs or perhaps by an estate agent - and the original is not available to you, or if the JPG was taken a long time ago on a make/model of phone which did not record EXIF tags, then you have to estimate the year or approximate year of the photo.
If the JPG was created by scanning in a photo then there may be limited EXIF data giving the scanner make and model but not, of course camera-specific EXIF tags such as date/time and setting such a shutter speed and ISO number, so, again you have to estimate the year or approximate year of the photo.
Or you might come across a JPG photo which does have camera-specific EXIF metadata tags, including date/time and ISO, but you have reason to believe those tags are not original. For example the photo could be a photo of a photo so that the EXIF tags reflect when the photo was itself photographed - not when it was originally taken. You might be able to tell this because something in the photo seems inconsistent with the EXIF date/time field or simply because there is a white margin. If EXIF camera-specific tags are either absent or believed to be not original you have to estimate the year or approximate year of the photo and if the tags are not original (rather than just absent) you should add to the name of the photo (filename or name assigned within a document management system) an indication that there is EXIF data but it is not believed to be original:
Document Description
Photo of garden (EXIF data not original) - IMG_1234
Like photos, video files contain metadata but in a different format and with different fields - for example there is no focal length field for a video file (because it may vary as the camera is zoomed in and out during the recording) but there is a duration field which, of course, a photo does not have. You can use Advanced Renamer (available for Windows and Mac computers) or MediaInfo (on Android and iPhones) to show metadata.
If you need to estimate and input an approximate date be aware that different document management systems have different ways of handling non-exact dates. Typically there will be a date field in which you always have to enter an exact date - e.g. 1 Jun 2015 - which will be used to arrange documents in order, but some systems then allow you to choose for the part of the date that you are uncertain of not to be shown when the document is listed so that it simply shows e.g. 2015.
Document date field typed in Document date field displayed Document Description field
01-06-2015 2015 Photo of garden - IMG_1234
01-01-2016 2016 Video of garden - IMG_1532
You might not know the exact month but nevertheless be able to be a bit more specific than just the year, e.g. summer 2015. In this case you can add summer 2015 at the end of the Document Description.
Document date field typed in Document date field displayed Document Description field
01-06-2015 2015 Photo of garden - summer 2015 - IMG_1234
If you only know the approximate year you could set the date so that it shows the year only and then add e.g. mid 2010s exact year unknown or circa. 2020 exact year unknown to the end of the Document Description to avoid giving a misleading sense of precision:
Document date field typed in Document date field displayed Document Description field
01-01-2015 2015 Photo of garden - mid 2010s exact year unknown - IMG_1234
01-01-2020 2020 Photo of garden - circa. 2020 exact year unknown - IMG_1274
Don't use the form about 10 years ago because if you do someone reading that will not know exactly when you entered those words and therefore be unclear what year to count back 10 years from.
If you have completely no idea at all when a photo was taken you can simply enter Date unknown at the end of the Document Description.
This information page is designed to be used only by clients of John Antell who have entered into an agreement for the provision of legal services. The information in it is necessarily of a general nature and will not be applicable to every case: it is intended to be used only in conjunction with more specific advice to the individual client about the individual case. This information page should not be used by, or relied on, by anyone else.
The information on this page about specific computer techniques is provided for information purposes only. Every reasonable effort has been made to ensure that the information is accurate and up to date at the time it was written but no responsibility for its accuracy, or for any consequences of relying on it, is assumed by me. You should satisfy yourself, before using any of the techniques, software or services described, that the techniques are appropriate for your purposes and that the software or service is reliable.
This page was lasted updated in June 2025. Disclaimer