Dump the date

I'll bet you've seen a wonderful photo ruined by a date and time stamp. There may be some professionals in different fields who need time and date embedded in a picture, but not a photojournalist striving for the very best shot.

Here's an under-appreciated fact: there's no need to mar your photo because the digital image file contains metadata with the date and time of the shot, along with a wealth of other information such as exposure data, the lens you used, and more. You can read the metadata on your computer.

So, turn off the date-time stamp.

However, what if later you discover you've created a photo with the camera's date stamp feature turned on? Here are some ways to get rid of it from a photo.

Crop the photo

The easiest way to eliminate the date stamp is to use your photo editor's crop tool. The date stamp is almost always positioned in the lower right corner of the image, where a little surgery with Adobe Photoshop Elements or any other photo editing software might not affect the rest of the photo very much.

Click the Crop tool and make sure the Aspect Ratio is set to No Restriction in the Options palette. Next, click and drag a crop box in the photo until the date stamp is gone.

Keep track of the date and time data. You can add the date the photo was taken to your image file's metadata. Windows Live Photo Gallery is one of a number of programs that can do that for you.

Find your newly cropped photo in Photo Gallery. Right-click the file and choose Change Time Taken. Now adjust the date to match the original date stamp, and click OK.

Rubber stamp over it

You might not always want to crop your photo to eliminate the date stamp. Instead, you could use your photo editor's Rubber Stamp or Clone tool to paint it out.

If there is a regular, non-patterned background behind the date this kind of surgery will be easy. If the background has a pattern, you will have to be very careful.

Open the image file in a photo editor, such as Photoshop Elements. Choose the Rubber Stamp or Clone tool. Set the size of the clone brush to about 30 pixels, or increase the brush size for larger photos. Alt-Click an area very close to the date stamp. Then just paint the date away until all you can see is the background.