Change Pictures' Date and Time Using Adobe Bridge

Seattle Skyline from Bremerton Ferry
Seattle, Washington

 

On March 13, 2022, many locations switched to Daylight Saving Time from Standard Time. If you didn't update your camera's date and time settings, then all the photos you've taken since then are off by one hour in their capture time.

Or maybe you have taken a trip to a location in another time zone and likewise forgotten to adjust the date and time setting in your camera. In my case, that was traveling to Seattle, Washington, which is on Pacific time, from Montana which is on Mountain time.

In a previous post, I described how to change the capture time on photos like these using Adobe Lightroom Classic and Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer. Recently a friend wanted to perform a similar change, but he uses Adobe Bridge (included with Photoshop).

Here are the steps to edit the capture time using Adobe Bridge.

1. Open Bridge and select one or multiple pictures which all need the same time and/or date change.

Multiple images selected in Adobe Bridge for a time change
 

2. From the Edit menu, choose Edit Capture Time. Or you can right-click on one of the images and select Edit Capture Time from the menu. The Edit Capture Time window opens, providing three different ways to change the date and time.

Edit Capture Time window
 

3. When you want to adjust for the change in Daylight Saving time or a time zone change, select the second option: Shift by hours, minutes and seconds. In my example, Seattle's Pacific time zone is one hour behind Montana's Mountain time zone. So I would select the Subtract button and enter 1 in the Hours box. Then click Change to apply the adjustment.

Shifting the time to one hour earlier
 

4. If you make a mistake and change the time to the wrong setting, select the same images and choose  Edit > Revert Capture Time To Original. Or you can right-click on one of the images and select Revert Capture Time To Original from the menu.

In my friend's case, his camera had gotten set to the completely wrong date. Images of a butterfly displayed a date of 01/14/2012 instead of 07/26/2015. As he put it, he did not photograph a butterfly in January! In this case, he needed to select the first option: Change to a Specific Date and Time. Then select the correct date from the calendar display. The time remains unchanged, or you can manually adjust the hours, minutes and seconds. Then click Change to apply the adjustment.

And don't forget to adjust your camera's date and time to reflect where you are next taking pictures!