date creation of a GIF image?

[sdsumike619]

Does anyone know if GIFs contain creation dates that are somehow accessible? I know FLV video files have the date of encoding in them and I use mediainfo to see it, but what about for images,, is there a tool available? I should also mention that I'm talking about an image on the web. If I download the image to the computer, then I think that will make the file created date (in windows explorer) the day I download it. I'm talking about the actual day that the file on the web came into existence..

[Case]

Some browsers set the document's last modified date on the server for downloaded images, instead of the download date. Not sure if that choice is "better".

JPEG images can have EXIF data embedded, such as the date the image was taken with a digital camera. No such thing for GIF, though.

[RabidDog]

If someone in the picture is reading a newspaper, and you can zoom in to see the date?, or maybe they used steganography, to hide some info...jpg have exif metadata but gif? not so much...

[El Heggunte]

JPEG images can have EXIF data embedded, such as the date the image was taken with a digital camera. No such thing for GIF, though.

Not exactly...

The Comment Extension contains textual information which
is not part of the actual graphics in the GIF Data Stream. It is suitable
for including comments about the graphics, credits, descriptions or any
other type of non-control and non-graphic data. The Comment Extension
may be ignored by the decoder, or it may be saved for later processing;
under no circumstances should a Comment Extension disrupt or interfere
with the processing of the Data Stream.

This block is OPTIONAL; any number of them may appear in the Data Stream.

b. Required Version. 89a.

( http://www.w3.org/Graphics/GIF/spec-gif89a.txt )

Applications that support GIF comments:

XnView
Microsoft GIF Animator
JASC Animation Shop

[sdsumike619]

Great, thanks for that info!