Searching not reading EXIF date?

[Brashquido]

Hi All,

I have irfanview 4.27 installed along with the bundled plugin pack and am wanting to search my photo library which is quite large (243GB / 55k files). In particular I am needing to search my library by EXIF creation date however I do not seem to be getting the desired results. This is the process I'm following;

1) Go to file -> search files
2) Set "*.jpg" as filename pattern
3) Put the root of my photo library in the "search in" field
4) Select the "date between" check box and enter my date range in dd-MM-yyyy format
5) Select the "look in EXIF data" tickbox
6) Click on start search

Doing this returns no results, however if I load a photo that I know was taken with in the date range specified and look at the EXIF info the DateTimeOriginal value is exactly what it should be (i.e. in the date range specified in the search). What seems to be happening is that the creation date from the local file system is being used instead as if I specify a date range based on this I get the desired results.

Just wondering why irfanview would be using the local filesystem creation timestamp rather than what is in the EXIF info as I have specified?

[Mij]

The "Look in Exif data " checkbox refers only to what you enter in the "Find text" box.

I believe that the "Date between" entries always refer to the "Date modified" property of the file. A search using Date between is very fast because only the file properties need to be searched. If you have copied your files from your camera card and not modified them since loading them on your computer, then the "Date modified" property is usually the same as the "Date taken" extracted from the Exif data. If you are not finding them that way then it is probably because you have changed them, by rotating or resizing them for instance.

You could type something like "2007:06" in the Find text box and check Look in Exif. You will then find all images taken in June 2007. It is very slow though, since each file in turn must be opened so that the Exif data can be searched.