Fixing modification dates on photos using the creation date in the photo file (set by the camera)

I have a large collection of photos, several dozens of Gb and I accidentally copied them without preserving the orginal creation dates.

Every photo you take has a date set in the file by the camera in what is called exif metadata. Some cameras can also record the exact coordinates where the photo was taken ... anyway, I needed to fix those dates. I also like to keep the files in a year/month/day folder structure.

So, here is my script:

#!/bin/sh

DATE=`exiftool "$1" | grep 'Create Date' | sed -e 's/.*: //;s/://g;s/..$//;s/ //g'`

DEST=`echo $DATE | sed 's@^\(....\)\(..\)\(..\).*@/media/shared/Pictures/\1/\2/\3/@'`
touch -t $DATE "$1"

if [ -d "$DEST" ]; thencp -an "$1" "$DEST"
else mkdir -p "$DEST"
cp -an "$1" "$DEST"
fi