Extract Artwork Creation Date from Procreate Canvas

Determines when an artist began working on a piece by examining file timestamps embedded within the Procreate canvas archive. This provides an approximate "start date" for provenance tracking and timeline display.

Usage

extract_create_date(artist, artwork, fp = NULL)

Arguments

artist

Character. Artist UUID identifying the creator. Used to construct CDN path if `fp` is NULL.

artwork

Character. Artwork UUID for this piece. Used with `artist` to locate the canvas file on CDN.

fp

Character. Optional local file path to the .procreate canvas. If NULL (default), retrieves the canvas from CDN using artist/artwork.

Value

POSIXct. The earliest file timestamp found in the canvas archive, representing the approximate creation start date.

Details

Procreate canvas files (.procreate) are ZIP archives containing multiple internal files (video segments, tiles, metadata). The earliest file modification timestamp indicates when creation began.

The returned timestamp comes from ZIP entry metadata, not from parsed canvas content. For more precise creation windows with confidence levels, use [verify_creation_period()] which analyzes MP4 segment headers.

Functions

• extract_create_date(): Extract earliest timestamp from canvas archive

See also

[verify_creation_period()], [extract_creation_window()]

Other extraction functions: extract_creation_window(), pl-extract-evidence, pl-extract-meta, pl-extract-signature, pl-extract-stats, pl-extract-timelapse, pl-extract-videos