[KPhotoAlbum] EXIF (and equivalent META data for non-jpeg) creation date

[Murray Strome]

This is definitely not just a KPhotoAlbum issue, but I would appreciate any advice on this issue.

The one single piece of information that I would like to preserve in any image is the "Date Taken", whether it is called Creation Date, or whatever. The only exception would be if I choose to explicitly change it (e.g. with EXIFTool or something similar). Provided nothing else were to change the date, the only times I would want it changed would be:
1. The time/date was incorrectly set on the digital camera photo taken
2. The time/date was incorrectly changed by some operation
3. The photo was created by scanning a photo, and I know when it was taken

One of my greatest causes of frustration in organizing photos with KPhotoAlbum (or any other tool) is that I find this date/time seems to get changed so easily by almost anything I do with the photo. Even simply copying it from one folder to another will often "mess up" the creation date.  When I use the GIMP to edit photos, this date is often changed to the date I save the new version. Picasa sometimes REALLY messes up the date.

If I can find a relatively easy way to fix the dates on the thousands of photos that have already been changed (if only I could remember when they were taken!), it will take me a LONG time to do so. In the meantime, is there any advice on how to prevent the creation time/date from being modified for new pictures? The only thing I can think of would be to learn how to use EXIFTool to save all of the EXIF data from photos as I take them, keep the information in whatever folder to which I copy them, then rewrite the data from the file back to the photos. This would entail a lot of work and already it takes to long to just rename the photos to something more intelligible and to do some simple editing to crop them and perhaps fix the colour balance.

I notice that even those photos that I have taken in the past month have had their dates changed. Some of the changes I can understand, such as from the date the photo was taken to the date I edited it or copied it from one computer to another. Others are a complete mystery. For example, some photos I took on June 3 and 4 now show a creation date of May 30.

Any help or advice would be appreciated.

Murray