How to Change a Photo's Date in Picasa to When the Photo Was Taken • Scan Your Entire Life

It's very likely there are a bunch of photos in your Picasa photo collection that are displaying the incorrect date and time when the photos were taken.

And this isn't just a problem when your photos won't sort chronologically. This will also be an issue for you every time you create a new folder or album inside of Picasa and it constantly tries to identify them use the wrong date.

Image in Picasa with the wrong date showing under magnification — Here's a scanned print that was photographed on June 4, 1968. Unfortunately, Picasa is showing it was taken on June 9, 2013. This is actually the date when the photo was scanned.

Maybe the date and time weren't set correctly in your digital camera before you took these photos. Or it's possible you scanned a bunch of prints or film negatives and they are still reflecting the dates and times when you actually scanned them.

Either way, you'll be happy to know as of version 3.5 of Picasa (changelog), you now have the ability to easily correct the date and time of your pictures and videos using the following steps.

How to Change the Date and Time Metadata in Picasa

The following instructions work for both the Windows and Mac versions of Google's Picasa.

1	Select the Photos / Videos
	Select the photo(s) or video(s) that you'd like to adjust. However, you can only adjust photos or videos from one folder or album at a time.
2	Click Tools > Adjust Date and Time
	Go up to the top menu and click on “Tools” and then select “Adjust Date and Time” from the list.
3	Type in the Correct Date and Time
	In the “New photo date” fields, enter the new date and time. If you aren't sure of the actual time the photo was taken — as is usually the case with older photos — do your best to approximate it. If you are adjusting the date and time for more than one photo at a time, you will see a slightly different looking window. You have the option of adjusting all of the selected photos by the amount, or to the same date and time.
4	Apply Changes
	Finally, click the “OK” button to close the window. Your photo(s) will now be adjusted with the new settings.

Verifying the Changes Were Applied

You can see that your dates have been updated by viewing the metadata information listed below your photos and videos in the “Editing” view.

Additionally, you will see the corrected date listed in the Properties Panel on the righthand side. (Click the button on the bottom right marked with an “i” to open up this panel)

Depending on variables such as the file type (.jpg, .png, or .tiff e.g.) of the image you adjusted and the operating system and version you are running, the date may be listed as either the “Camera Date” and/or the “File Date” property.

Possible places the corrected date will show up in the "Properties Panel." — In this .jpg version of the example photo, the adjusted date is reflected as the “Creation Date” as well as the “File Date.”

The instructions and screenshots were created using Picasa v.3.9.0 on Microsoft Windows 7.