Adding filename to IPTC data and-or exif data
Posted on 2007-07-21 00:10:33-07 by timflang
Dear everyone
I have recently come across exiftool so I am new to the way it works. I have 5,000 photographs which all have long file names descirbing what they show and when they were taken (100-200 characters is common for a filename in this case).
I've recently signed up to a photo sharing site and they take the photo caption from one of the meta data fields. Therefore I would like to place the filename into IPTC metadata and-or the EXIF data. I've still to work out which field I will use as it will depend on what the photo sharing site reads.
To do this, do I simple use the -FILENAME tag to copy the filename or do I need to tell the IPTC-EXIF tag that it = filename.
E.g.
exiftool -FILENAME>IPTC:[field that is chosen]
or is it
exiftool -IPTC:[field that is chosen]=FILENAME
When writing the new information, does the program modify any of the creation and/or modification dates on the file attributes? I would be writing to the original files as I have back ups of all my work, via a nightly back up system that I run should anything go wrong. I will of course be running tests first.
Thank you for all your help in advance.
Tim
Posted on 2007-07-21 07:04:58-07 by bogdan in response to 5784
You can do that by typing:
exiftool "-iptc:caption-abstract<filename" *.jpg
-this will set filename into iptc on all jpg files in working directory.
Greetings, Bogdan Direct Responses: 5786 | Write a response Posted on 2007-07-21 10:26:46-07 by timflang in response to 5785 Re: Adding filename to IPTC data and-or exif data Bogdan
Thank you for your reply. I would never have got that, not without hours of studying of the help file which I have printed out and been reading. It gets quite complicated at times which is understable, given what the program offers.
What character does &l stand for (assuming it is a character)?
Is it possible to tell the program to work through all subdirectories?
Regards
Tim
Posted on 2007-07-21 10:54:01-07 by bogdan in response to 5786
Hi Tim,
Indeed, there's nothing ExifTool can't do (in one or another way) :-)
You've probably copy/pasted the example I wrote... This forum doesn't allow directly writting < character (so & +lt is used -as "less than").
Working on subdirectories... I believe you can use:
exiftool "-iptc:caption-abstract
Bogdan
Posted on 2007-07-21 11:50:30-07 by exiftool in response to 5787
Hi Tim,
The command is:
(Bogdan's "<" should have had a semicolon after it to show up as a "<" symbol.)
DIR is a directory name, and the -r option causes all subdirectories to be processed as well.
- Phil
Posted on 2007-07-21 12:31:35-07 by bogdan in response to 5788
Hi again,
About "less than" character I've used... does it mean you don't see it in your browser?
I mean, is there a difference you see for: "<" and "<"? -because I see both equal (in IE7).
Bogdan
Posted on 2007-07-21 18:25:03-07 by timflang in response to 5787
Hi Bogdan
Thank you for your further comments. The command makes much more sense now.
I tried a test and it worked in most cases. However whenever it came across a
German special letter such as an a (ae), o (oe), or u (ue) I.E. with umlauts,
it came up with an error message, stopped copying the title and moved on to the next file.
The error is Warning: Malformed UTF-8 characters(s) followed by the filename,
which when it comes to the special letter, has a different character shown.
Could that be due to the font that windows XP dos uses?
The filenames appear correctly in windows explorer, even the original copy and
the half updated new file. It was only by chance that my test included a folder
with special German letters.
As I have taken photos in Austrian towns where such letters are used,
I need to include the letters in my filenames-captions. I could use oe but
I think it's a lazy way of typing and I find it harder to read names spelt that way.
If I outputted the complete list of errors to a text file, I could then
manually amend the files using a program called Exifer. However there must be a way
of doing this automatically and I don't have time to keep amending the titles in
Exifer, every time a problem occurs.
Although I've not been able to view the TIFF ITPC info in Exifer and XnView,
it appears that something has been written to it. Apart from the issues above
all the other files worked perfectly. Very powerful program that could be run
over night. It also ignored without error any files which were not in the right format,
such as TXT and AVI files. That was good as I have those scattered across my photo folders.
Kind regards
Timothy Langner
Posted on 2007-07-21 21:59:17-07 by exiftool in response to 5791
ExifTool expects special characters in UTF8 unless otherwise specified.
Your filename characters are likely Windows Latin1, and if
so adding a -L option to the command will solve the problem.
With -L, exiftool assumes the input text is in Windows Latin1.
Bogdan: Both of your last <'s worked, however earlier ones in the command
appeared as "<" for some reason.
- Phil
Posted on 2007-07-21 22:55:08-07 by timflang in response to 5792
Phil
Thank you for your prompt replies, very helpful.
It saved me having to look it up UTF-8 on the Internet.
I'm going to do another test and if it works
I'm going to run the program over night.
I've got all my photos backed up using a nightly back up system
so I can easily undo any any major problems.
Regards
Tim
(This article is based on a thread on the CPAN::Forum.)
exiftool "-iptc:caption-abstract<filename" -r DIR
Published on 2007-07-21