Question

I’m a little bit surprised and puzzled. I try to read the property items from an image. Particularly, I’m interested in the “Date Taken”. I have written a procedure that does exactly that. More or less. With some files it works perfectly, but…

I have some files that have a ‘Date Taken’ in the properties (when viewed by Windows Explorer, Windows 7 x64). They differ from the date created, modified and accessed. So I do have a 4th date.
However, if I loop through the property items, it does not show up (on any ID).
When I look for it on the PropertyItem.Id (0x9003 or 36867), i get that the property item does not exist.

My Code to loop through the property items:

        for (int i = 0; i < fileNames.Length; i++)
        {
            FileStream fs = new FileStream(fileNames[i], FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
            Image pic = Image.FromStream(fs, false, false);



            int t = 0;
            foreach (PropertyItem pii in pic.PropertyItems)
            {
                MessageBox.Show(encoding.GetString(pii.Value, 0, pii.Len - 1) + " - ID: " + t.ToString());
                t++;
            }
        }

The code to read only the “Date Taken” property (I stole from here: http://snipplr.com/view/25074/)

    public static DateTime DateTaken(Image getImage)
    {
        int DateTakenValue = 0x9003; //36867;

        if (!getImage.PropertyIdList.Contains(DateTakenValue))
            return DateTime.Parse("01-01-2000");

        string dateTakenTag = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetString(getImage.GetPropertyItem(DateTakenValue).Value);
        string[] parts = dateTakenTag.Split(':', ' ');
        int year = int.Parse(parts[0]);
        int month = int.Parse(parts[1]);
        int day = int.Parse(parts[2]);
        int hour = int.Parse(parts[3]);
        int minute = int.Parse(parts[4]);
        int second = int.Parse(parts[5]);

        return new DateTime(year, month, day, hour, minute, second);
    }

However, when I change the date taken in the ‘File properties window’ of Windows Explorer, It starts to show up in my program.

So my question is: Where does this “Date Taken” comes from? How can I access it? Could it be that there is another source of information besides the EFIX Data?

Thanks!

Answer 1

you can try something like this if you want to start with some basic coding

// Load an image however you like.
System.Drawing.Image image = new Bitmap(“my-picture.jpg”);

Referenced from AbbydonKrafts

// Get the Date Created property 
//System.Drawing.Imaging.PropertyItem propertyItem = image.GetPropertyItem( 0x132 );
System.Drawing.Imaging.PropertyItem propertyItem 
         = image.PropertyItems.FirstOrDefault(i => i.Id == 0x132 ); 
if( propItem != null ) 
{ 
  // Extract the property value as a String. 
  System.Text.ASCIIEncoding encoding = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding(); 
  string text = encoding.GetString(propertyItem.Value, 0, propertyItem.Len - 1 ); 

  // Parse the date and time. 
  System.Globalization.CultureInfo provider = CultureInfo.InvariantCulture; 
  DateTime dateCreated = DateTime.ParseExact( text, "yyyy:MM:d H:m:s", provider ); 
}