Lost EXIF - any way to recover?

[Terry Pinnell]

I'm trying to reconstruct the chronological sequence of many early
holiday photos, edited in the time before I wised up to all the issues
over the impermenance of EXIF data.

Before I give up and resort entirely to guesswork and arguments with
my wife, can I just double check on one fundamental point please. Is
there *any* way that JPG files on my HD can be processed to yield the
original EXIF data? The files obviously started life in my digicam,
complete with EXIF Date/Time to the second, so it's frustrating to
have lost it.

In the same sense that 'deleted' HD files *can* actually be recovered,
is there any freeware (or any other) program that will do so for EXIF
data please?

If, as I suspect, the answer is a firm No, then out of intellectual
curiosity, can anyone here explain in non-techie terms why it wasn't
simply preserved? That is, regardless of various image editors'
indifference to it? I've asked in rec.photo.digital too.

 

[fathom]

I'm trying to reconstruct the chronological sequence of
many early holiday photos, edited in the time before I
wised up to all the issues over the impermenance of EXIF
data.

Before I give up and resort entirely to guesswork and
arguments with my wife, can I just double check on one
fundamental point please. Is there *any* way that JPG files
on my HD can be processed to yield the original EXIF data?
The files obviously started life in my digicam, complete
with EXIF Date/Time to the second, so it's frustrating to
have lost it.

In the same sense that 'deleted' HD files *can* actually be
recovered, is there any freeware (or any other) program
that will do so for EXIF data please?

If, as I suspect, the answer is a firm No, then out of
intellectual curiosity, can anyone here explain in
non-techie terms why it wasn't simply preserved? That is,
regardless of various image editors' indifference to it?
I've asked in rec.photo.digital too.

I suspect the data is gone for good, but can't give a definitive
answer. I do suggest that in the future you use EXIFer to
export all the EXIF data from your pictures as soon as you
transfer them to the PC. Then no matter what happens, you can
always save that data back to the image file.

http://www.friedemann-schmidt.com/software/exifer/

 

[Terry Pinnell]

I suspect the data is gone for good, but can't give a definitive
answer. I do suggest that in the future you use EXIFer to
export all the EXIF data from your pictures as soon as you
transfer them to the PC. Then no matter what happens, you can
always save that data back to the image file.

http://www.friedemann-schmidt.com/software/exifer/

Thank you. Pretty well what I expected. Must say I'm still a bit
surprised that it's beyond even partial recovery by a modern clever
program. It's incredible that a single crop or brightness increase in
PaintShop Pro 7, for example, has permanently destroyed all EXIF data
in that file.

Needless to say, I do things differently now. But that leaves a fair
bit of detective work to be done on the victims of my early-day
carelessness!

But I suppose anyone who has digitised old photos from scans of prints
and slides must be used to similar chores? The bulk of my prints have
no dates marked on the reverse side, and I never got around to marking
many of them myself.