Daan, thank you for taking the time to reply.
> Most users like to preserve the original timestamp that their camera assigned to the file because it allows them to view the files in chronological order.
In that case, I am not "Most users".
My camera, like most, assigns file names to the images, so a filename sort places them in the order taken, and I have no problem viewing them in the order taken regardless of the file modification date.
If I really want to get fancy, I user an external utility to rename the files according to their EXIF dates.
But again, any modification to any file should set the file modification date accordingly, in order for my file synch and backup to work. I understand that some users (I disagree with you, not "most users") might not want this behavior, but breaking the OS should not be the default.
> If it should happen again: Turn on the setting that copies image comments into database annotations, re-thumbnail the files, and sort them on annotation (for this, annotations must be made visible in the thumbnail view) to figure out more quickly which files have a comment.
Two problems with this approach:
(1) These commented files were spread across dozens of folders, not all in one.
(2) It destroys the file names the camera had assigned.
> Well, ThumbsPlus does offer you the option of updating the timestamp -you just have to remember using it-
I appreciate that the option "Set to current date/time" is soomewhat sticky: once applied, it remains in effect when commenting other photos during the same session. Unfortunately it is cleared when I quit and later restart Thumbs Plus. Is there any chance of making it's stickiness be durable across a quit and restart?
> and it does properly update a file's archive bit when it modifies it (regardless of whether the timestamp is updated), so that should accomodate most backup strategies.
I synchronize my laptop and desktop via file modification dates via a batch script that uses:
xcopy source target /D
I can't imagine how to safely use the archive bit for this without interfering with a backup system which also used the archive bit.
> BTW, the Modify File Info dialog that you used deals with oldfashioned image comments from before IPTC and EXIF were introduced:
These comments work better for me because they are preserved across format changes (to TIFF, PNG, etc) even if I check the box to remove EXIF tags. Also they are displayed in a slide show if I select Options / Viewing / Slide Show / Show: File Comments.
- Rich