Being able to add the date and time to a photo can be of aid in diverse situations. This is a great way to link a picture with a special memory, to document your working activity for professional or legal reasons or perhaps create an “old photograph” look in case you’re feeling nostalgic.
We can see this information if we have the photos stored on our computer and use an image viewer capable of displaying the EXIF metadata. But at the same time we can visually add the date and time to those pictures.
The straightforward method is to set our digital camera to print the date and/or time information on images at the moment of taking them (if the camera has this feature). However, there are drawbacks to this solution:
- The original photos will be permanently altered, so there is no way of getting rid of the date/time stamp afterwards.
- The stamp will not be correctly applied on portrait photos, since they need to be rotated first and most digital cameras will not do that.
- The stamp won’t be the most aesthetic, since the color, font, size or placement can not be adjusted.
Fortunately there is a better solution. Since the date/time information is written by all digital cameras in the metadata (EXIF record) associated with all digital photos, we can first transfer and backup all of our images on our computer, then apply the time stamp with a specialized program.
Our solution, BatchPhoto, is a Windows and Mac tool that can automatically add date and time to multiple photos simultaneously, in one session. It doesn’t matter if you have 50 or 500 photos, the program will be able to read the original date and time from the metadata record and apply that information to all your files.
Here are the benefits of using our tool:
- Copy & backup the original images on your computer.
- Automatically rotate portrait photos before applying the stamp.
- Completely customize the appearance of your date/time stamp.
- Correct the date/time if it was incorrectly recorded by your digital cameras.
- Perform the same operation on thousands of photos in just a few minutes by taking advantage of multi-core processors.
- Directly send the photos via email or upload them to a website via FTP.
Date Stamp your Photos in 3 Simple Steps
BatchPhoto makes it truly easy to insert the date and time into your pictures. All you have to do is follow a simple, three-step process: Add Photos, Edit Photos and Setup. Here’s how to do it:
Step 1
In the first step, just add the images you wish to date stamp. You can do this by using drag & drop, by clicking on the Add Photos button to add files individually or by clicking on the Add button if you want to add an entire folder with or without subfolders.
Step 2
In the second step you get to edit your pictures as you wish. To insert the date and/or time, just go to Add Filter > Annotate > Date. Now you can begin making a wide range of adjustments to your stamp, so it matches your personal preferences.
You’re free to choose the preferred date format from multiple options, select from nine preset positions or freely place the stamp where you want, adjust the size and rotation angle, set the transparency, pick the font style and color or apply special effects like shadow and bounding-box.
In addition to adding the date to your images, the tool gives you the opportunity to further optimize and enhance your photography with ease. Depending on your needs, you can rotate, resize, crop, convert or watermark photos, as well as improve their general aspect. In order to do that you can adjust the contrast, brightness and saturation, reduce the noise or sharpen your pictures.
There are also options to apply artistic effects and decorate images with beautiful borders and frames.
Step 3
In the third step you get to set your configuration before the batch processing starts. You can select the destination of your new images (a folder on your computer, upload via FTP or send them via email), as well as the image format.
Once you’ve made your final selections, all that’s left to do is click on the Process button. Next BatchPhoto will automatically apply your edits to the entire batch of photos.
It’s worth mentioning that, in addition to the batch processing feature, the program gives you the possibility to save your commonly-used filters and settings as profiles. Then you’ll be able to use those profiles in other sessions to quickly process different sets of images.
If you’d like to try BatchPhoto, you can download the fully-featured trial version here.
