How to rename a large amount of photographs with Windows Powershell using exif data?

Question

Hi to all,

as in the subject I would like to ask for help on how to rename a large amount of photographs using Windows Powershell. Specifically I was currently using this string:

" Get-ChildItem | Rename-Item -NewName {"IMG_" + $.LastWriteTime.ToString("yyyyMMdd_HHmmss") + ($.Extension)} "

The problem is that I need to use the exif data of the photographs, in particular I need to use the "Acquisition date" and the "LastWriteTime" parameter is not correct. I would like the output file name to be the following: IMG_yyyyMMdd_HHmmss.jpg where for "yyyyMMdd_HHmmss" I would like the acquisition date to be used. Can someone please help me?

Answer 1

Here's a script that I hacked together a few years ago that you can modify to do that. In my case, the file names were ok, but I wanted to modify the LastWriteTime to match the exif date.

I was looking for "Date taken" and "Media Created", but you can modify that for "Acquisition date" if that's the exif value in your files.

$folder = 'c:\temp\zzzzevan\test'
cls
$shell = New-Object -COMObject Shell.Application
$files = Get-ChildItem -Path $folder 
$shellfolder = $shell.Namespace($folder)
foreach ($f in $files) {
    ""
    $f.name 
    $PicDate = "" 
    $shellfile = $shellfolder.ParseName($f.name )
    # To find the ID of the extended attribute you're interested in:
    0..287 | ForEach-Object {
        $prop = $shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($null, $_)
        $date = $shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($shellfile, $_)
        if ($shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($null, $_) -eq "Date taken") {        
            if ($date -ne "") { 
                $PicDate = $date
                '{0} = {1} = {2}' -f $_, $prop, $date
            }
        }
        if ($shellfolder.GetDetailsOf($null, $_) -eq "Media created") {   
            if ($date -ne "") { 
                $PicDate =  $date
                '{0} = {1} = {2}' -f $_, $prop, $date
            }             
        }
    }
    if ($PicDate -ne "") {
        $PicDate = ($PicDate.ToCharArray() | foreach {if ($_ -match '([\d:/apm ])') {$Matches[0]}}) -join ""
        "Current LastWriteTime date is {0}" -f $f.LastWriteTime
        "Set it to $PicDate"
        
        # Select which time value you want to update 
        #$f.LastWriteTime = [datetime]$PicDate         
        #$f.CreationTime = [datetime]$PicDate
        # Rename the $f file here. 
    }
}