I'm new to this whole EXIF garbage. From my understanding, it was invented to give a fingerprint to pictures showing the day they were taken, the day they were edited, the camera make/model, the time it was taken, the location it was taken (if GPS enabled) and all other good stuff. Can this be edited? I mean, once you download a EXIF reader, and you look at the data is retrieves, is this a credible source of information? Or, is it just an easy, smoke screen for someone to edit the EXIF information so there is no TRUE way of finding out the information I mentioned above? Or is there a true way of finding data?
I don't know what you mean by "otherwise." Some of that data can be edited, but unless you really want to fool people and lie to yourself, why do it? I can see some purpose for it, but I wouldn't do it at all. In Windows 7 or Vista, just click on an image and edit some of its EXIF data on the bottom "description" panel. You can just click each field and change it. When you edit the photo's EXIF data, check the "last-modified-date" to see if there was tampering with the date.
Apparently I need to rephrase... Is there a way to pull up the Exif/Pict of a picture, and not have any indication that the exif data was tampered with? For instance... if I take a picture today dated 9/4/10, could I edit the exif in a way where when you look at the data, you would see the picture was taken 2/12/06, but would not be able to tell I edited it? Or will there ALWAYS be a true unchangable "edited date" on the exif?
Are you trying to edit picture to put alien space ships in them and want to know if someone can bust you on the date the picture was really taken?
If you want to be really nefarious, you can change the date on your computer to the date you are changing on the picture so that the last modified date is the same as the new picture date.
ACDsee will allow you to modify some of the EXIF fields. But you still have to change the timestamp on the actual file. Either in a command window or use an app to do it.