Why the first rectangle starts there
Orange or yellow camera dates often carry a dark outline and a soft antialiased fringe. The rectangle must include all three, not merely the bright cores of the numbers.
The opening position is a convenience, not detection. Move and resize it to the real timestamp; the tool does not claim to recognise a date by reading the picture.
A date over sky, wall or soft ground is a strong local repair. A date crossing a face or a unique object is missing-picture reconstruction and should be judged with the compare control at full size.
The boundary of the fill
- No invisible original survives underneath burned-in text.The fill estimates a plausible surface from nearby pixels; it does not reveal a hidden layer.
- Busy structure is not a flat-ground job.When letters cross a face, hand, product edge or unique texture, a small automatic fill may redraw the wrong thing convincingly.
Questions before applying the fill
What decides whether the filled area looks natural?
The ground around the box. Flat sky, painted walls and soft out-of-focus areas provide consistent evidence. Faces, hands, lettering, grids and unique objects require structure the surrounding pixels may not contain.
Should the box touch the letters?
Give every glyph a small margin so antialiasing, shadow and outline are included. A box clipped to the visible dark core leaves a pale or coloured trace around the fill.
Can I undo a bad pass?
Yes. Box geometry and fill operations are kept as reversible steps, and holding Space, or the Original view, shows the frame as it arrived.
