DigitalVolcano Software Support

Hi. I usually keep backups of photos, and make multiple copies of them in different folders. Maybe due to all the moving around, the digitised date, modified date, can no longer be trusted as the date when it happened. Taking a look at the at exif date in ACDSee doesn't show any more dates, and ACDSEe Metadata gives a seemingly impossible Database date and time. How do we find the original in these cases?

Is there anything in the selection assistant that allows me to point the original file out quickly?

Anyone care to point out why these dates keep on changing? Can we prevent this from happening, and Duplicate Cleaner Pro can select all photos with non-original exif date?

You can use Exif date as a duplicate criteria. The 'Match other tags' section in image mode has both the digitised date (date taken) and modified date (different to the file modified date). Not sure if this helps with your problem.

The file modified date is usually a good indicator of the earliest version of a file - it shouldn't change when copied.

I I know that your post is from 2018 but maybe that may help someone else. I faced the same need and here is the filter I used to acheive that.
In the assistant selection of version 5 of cleaner pro

By group
I selected : smallest image dimensions
I selected : newest date modified
I selected : newest date created

By column
date/time taken
Motif: !(?!^$)
Regex
Keep the selections

Like that, only the biggest file will be keept (resolution)
and that the date modified and created are the oldest (often copie put newest date)
and if a date is existing as "taken", keep this one over the others.

Seem do the trick for me.