CreateDate, the EXIF digitized date

CreateDate is ExifTool's name for the EXIF field DateTimeDigitized (0x9004): the moment the image became digital data. On anything shot with a digital camera or a phone, that is the same second as DateTimeOriginal and the two values match. They only split when the picture existed before the file did.

Scanned film

A negative exposed in July 1987 and scanned in March 2026 should carry both dates, the original for the shot and the digitized one for the scan:

[ExifIFD]       DateTimeOriginal                : 1987:07:14 12:00:00
[ExifIFD]       CreateDate                      : 2026:03:02 21:17:45
[IFD0]          ModifyDate                      : 2026:03:02 21:17:45

Scanner software has no idea when the film was exposed, so it writes the scan time, sometimes into all three tags, and photo libraries file 1987 under 2026. Setting DateTimeOriginal by hand fixes the sort order and keeps the scan date where it belongs. EXIF can't express "July 1987, day unknown", so pick a placeholder day and time and use it consistently. XMP is more forgiving: photoshop:DateCreated accepts a bare 1987.

Same format as the other EXIF dates: YYYY:MM:DD HH:MM:SS, local time, no zone. The zone, if known, goes in OffsetTimeDigitized (0x9012), described under OffsetTime.

Same name, different tags

The XMP column follows the Metadata Working Group mapping. Note that xmp:CreateDate is the digitized date, not the capture date, whatever the name suggests. Video adds one more trap: QuickTime has its own CreateDate, which the QuickTime spec defines as UTC, although plenty of cameras store local time there anyway.

Setting it

The EXIF editor shows it as Date Digitized, under EXIF Date & Time, and writes it on JPEG and TIFF. To do the same from the command line, or to copy one date onto the other:

exiftool -DateTimeOriginal="1987:07:14 12:00:00" scan.jpg
exiftool "-CreateDate<DateTimeOriginal" photo.jpg

The first fixes a scan. The second copies the capture date into CreateDate, for files where an app filled one and not the other. Flatbed scans often arrive as TIFF, which stores these tags in the same IFD layout as JPEG. For OS-level tools, see how to change the date taken.