Every last Sunday in March we move our clocks forward one hour in the UK (some countries in the southern hemisphere go back an hour at a similar time of year). And on the last Sunday in October we go back to GMT (and vice versa for the southern hemisphere countries). Of course, many people diligently go round their house changing all the clocks and watches they can get their hands on in a time-honoured ritual, but there are some clocks that often go neglected, like the one in your camera.

I realised this morning (only 2 months late) that my cameras were both still on GMT, so I promptly changed them. However, what about all the photos I had taken since March 31st? I have no fewer than 3,152 photos with incorrect metadata, surely it’s too late to fix that now?

Thankfully, Adobe Lightroom has the answer. In the Library module, select all the photos that are affected (if you’re in the UK, this will be all photos taken on or after 31st March 2013) and from the Metadata menu, select ‘Edit Capture Time…’

This brings up the following dialog:

Check the second radio button (‘Shift by a set number of hours (time zone adjust)’). If you’re moving from winter to summer (as we are here in the north, not that you’d know it from recent weather) then select ‘+1’ in the drop-down menu (‘spring forward’, as the saying goes). For transition to winter time, select ‘-1’ (‘fall back’, which only works if you don’t use the word ‘autumn’ for the time of year that follows summer). Click ‘Change’ and let Lightroom do its thing. Now go and change the clocks on your cameras, and remember to include them next time the clocks are changed.

If you live in Iceland, you can disregard this post, and smugly enjoy your year-round GMT.