Dating My Pictures

I love my SONY Alpha 350 DSLR but it cannot imprint the dates on my pictures easily. The SONY Picture Motion Browser only allows for date imprinting a folder at a time and in order to imprint a date on a new picture it seems to me that the user needs to establish a whole new folder for importing into the SONY Picture Motion Browser. There are some date imprinting software available on the web but so far, the first one I tried downsizes the file size of my pictures by as much as 75% (e.g., from 6MB to 1.5MB but still keeps the same dimensions).....anybody out there have anything to offer on this? Thanks!

Isn't it possible in the camera itself, under DPOF menu items?

Bart
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x700 - 7xi - 7 - 7D - A700... Do I need 7 x 7 to be happy...?

Bart that would take care of the matter for printing purposes alone but I want to actually add the date to the file itself such as what a point and shoot camera does....thanks...

Not sure what you mean here... These data are already in the EXIF metadata (see properties of your archived images). Or am I missing your point completely?

Bart
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x700 - 7xi - 7 - 7D - A700... Do I need 7 x 7 to be happy...?

Are you wanting the date added as a file extension or the date added on the image itself?

John

the date is in the exif, if you want it in the file name, you will need to rename the files with a batch tool...

Have you tried this open source software?

http://jdatestamp.sourceforge.net/

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banzen

http://www.flickr.com/photos/banzen/

thank you.....I will try it tonight when I get home.....

Date imprinting on photos might be appropriate for technical photos that are to be printed for the record, but, for normal use pictures, date stamping is considered by most to be asthetically undesirable and the mark of an amateur photographer. To each his own, I guess, but I thought I'd give you a heads-up on this, because, if you change your view of these date stamps, removing them is not easy unless you crop them out.
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Jerry
Sony V1, H5 and A350... Still learning...

'The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.'
-- Dorothea Lange

http://www.pbase.com/icicle50/root

Jerry, thank you for your post....yes, I am aware of the aesthetic issues involved....many of the dating programs create a copy of the original so if I needed a pristine one I would still have it......but just think...how many times have you seen a photo that is 10 or 20 or 50 years old and wondered, "hey, when was this picture taken?"

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Busch

Take the scenic route! Life is too short to do otherwise.

http://www.pbase.com/busch

JerryCurtis said:

Date imprinting on photos might be appropriate for technical photos that are to be printed for the record, but, for normal use pictures, date stamping is considered by most to be asthetically undesirable and the mark of an amateur photographer.

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That's a bit of an elitist statement Jerry.

I always add both a date and brief description to every photo via PhotoShop and fade it so that it remains unobtrusive. There seems little point in taking photos if no context is added to them. All my photos end up on a pair of digital photo frames, so it makes sense to show the text on each slide. Common sense I'd say ;-)

What does look cr@p are the oversived, badly placed, watermarks that some folks insist on using to destroy their photos.

Yemble said:

JerryCurtis said:

Date imprinting on photos might be appropriate for technical photos that are to be printed for the record, but, for normal use pictures, date stamping is considered by most to be asthetically undesirable and the mark of an amateur photographer.

Click to expand...

That's a bit of an elitist statement Jerry.

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Wasn't meant to be elitist - just conveying what I know to be a widely-held perception. I have to confess, it's my perception as well.

Yemble said:

I always add both a date and brief description to every photo via PhotoShop and fade it so that it remains unobtrusive. There seems little point in taking photos if no context is added to them. All my photos end up on a pair of digital photo frames, so it makes sense to show the text on each slide. Common sense I'd say ;-)

Click to expand...

I agree - for special purposes like using in an digital photo frame or one's personal album or print collection, it's fine, but I wouldn't use date stamps on anything I intended to display to the world - and neither would any other serious photographer that I know. Besides, the printing services I use all print the date and partial filenames on the backs of all the prints - even 4X6 ones. I didn't know the OP's experience level and was just trying to alert him to avoid his marring his original files.

Yemble said:

What does look cr@p are the oversived, badly placed, watermarks that some folks insist on using to destroy their photos.

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I don't do this, but I can understand photographers who do watermark images they post to the internet. There's so much image theft these days, and it's amazing what pros can do with a low-res image if it's important enough. Generally, though, these watermarks are placed only on the web versions, so they haven't permanently marred their original files.

--
Jerry
Sony V1, H5 and A350... Still learning...

'The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.'
-- Dorothea Lange

http://www.pbase.com/icicle50/root