After converting my photos, they lost their date taken and my gallery sorts them wrongly. Why?
Because the date taken lives in the photo's EXIF data, and the converter redraws the image without copying that data into the new file. Your gallery then sorts by the file's own date, which is usually the moment you downloaded it. The fix: keep the originals, and put the date in the file name before converting, since the tool keeps names.
Where the date was stored
Every photo from a phone or camera has two different dates. One is the capture date, written inside the file as EXIF data when the shot is taken. The other is the file date in your operating system, which changes whenever the file is copied or downloaded again. Gallery and album apps use the first when they find it and fall back to the second when they do not.
The Image format converter decodes the picture, draws it and saves it in the new format. That carries the pixels across and nothing else: no capture date, no location, no device model. Before dropping EXIF the tool applies the orientation recorded in it, so the result stands the right way up, but the date is gone. And every file in the batch now carries roughly the same download time, so the order falls apart.
Is this a flaw?
It is the other side of a feature. Dropping EXIF means product photos you upload do not reveal where your home or storeroom is, which is what most sellers want. But if the photos are memories or a work archive where chronology matters, do not use the converted files as your archive.
How to keep the order
- Do not delete the originals. Make them the archive and use converted copies only for uploading and sending.
- If the converted copies need to stay in order, name the originals by date before converting. You can read any photo's capture date in the Image metadata inspector and remover tool.
- Convert the batch. Names stay and only the extension changes: 2026-03-14-shop.png comes out as 2026-03-14-shop.jpg.
- Sort the folder by name instead of date. Year, then month, then day sorts alphabetically in time order.
Why the tool does not carry the date alone
The tool writes no metadata into its output at all; each image comes from a fresh canvas. That keeps its behavior plain and predictable: what comes out is pixels only. If you need to change format while keeping the date inside the file, that is a job for photo software on your computer that can copy EXIF, not for this tool.
And if you want the opposite, to strip location and dates while keeping the format and pixels exactly as they are, the Image metadata inspector and remover tool removes the data without re-encoding.
Common questions
Can the date be restored in the converted file?
Not from the converted file itself, because the data was never copied into it. The date exists only in the original.
Will photos appear rotated once EXIF is gone?
No. The tool applies the orientation before drawing, so the output is already upright.