Tutorial: Creating a timestamp on photos/timelapse

Draw a timestamp on your time-lapse

I think its nice to be able to see how much time has elapsed during a time-lapse video. To do this, a timestamp has to be drawn on each image. This can be done with batch processing in some photo editing software, but I did it using python scripts. Its free (apart from Windows) and more customizable. Here's a tutorial on how to do it.

Software requirements: Windows, Python, PIL, (Aggdraw)

To run python scripts, you need to have Python installed. To be able to draw on photos, you also need the Python Imaging Library (PIL) which is only available for Windows. For drawing a nice anti-aliased clock you also need Aggdraw. Make sure all packages have the same version number, eg. 2.6.

Script

Now you need a script which opens each photo, take the EXIF date/time information and draw it on the photo. Below are two scripts you can use. Save it as a .py file and put it in a folder with .jpg files. Click on the .py file and the script should run. Done! Your images are now saved in a new subfolder.

  Basic timestamp (no Aggdraw required)

Download script 

Analog clock timestamp

Download script

 

 

This work by startgrid is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.