Google Photos Timestamp Reconstructor

This project is designed to fix the timestamps on photos taken from Google Photos. When exporting photos from Google Photos, the creation date is not retained; instead, they are dated at the time of export. However, a properly exported photo from Google Photos will usually produce a corresponding .json file that includes the correct date information, such as in the example below:

{
  "title": "20130705_180833.jpg",
  "description": "",
  "imageViews": "31",
  "creationTime": {
    "timestamp": "1234567890",
    "formatted": "Jul 5, 2013, 4:56:30 PM UTC"
  },
  "photoTakenTime": {
    "timestamp": "1234567890",
    "formatted": "Mar 30, 2019, 5:08:33 PM UTC"
  },
  "geoData": {
    "latitude": 0.0,
    "longitude": 0.0,
    "altitude": 0.0,
    "latitudeSpan": 0.0,
    "longitudeSpan": 0.0
  },
  ...
}

This script attempts to fix the timestamps on each photo or video by extracting the necessary information from the photoTakenTime field in the corresponding .json file, if it exists. If the .json file is not present, the program will try to extract the exif data from the image, assuming it is in a format that supports exif. If exif data is also not available, the program will try to extract date information from the image filename.

Note: There are ways to manually fix the timestamps using free tools like this one, or by using a paid service like Metadata fixer. This script was created as a quick and dirty solution that has worked well enough for the me.