Sort of HowTo: EXIF (and IPTC) image metadata manipulation

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Bushman.K
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Sort of HowTo: EXIF (and IPTC) image metadata manipulation

Post by Bushman.K »

Hi,

I'm a huge fan of using EXIF and IPTC embedded metadata in images, and I know, that only a few pieces of software, used for stacking and image manipulation are capable to keep (or write) EXIF sections into resulting images.

Just in case if someone wants to be able to do some tricks with EXIF, I'd like to briefly share my own techniques.

First tool I'm using to manipulate EXIF is JHead. It's not GUI software - you have to run it from command prompt. It's cross-platform, so you can use it everywhere from Windows to Linux.
Official website: http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead/

It's not a "Swiss army knife", but it does quite a bit. For example, to transfer the whole metadata section from one file to another, you have to run this:

Code: Select all

jhead -te donor.jpg recipient.jpg
To get an opposite result - JPEG file without any metadata, command should like this (don't forget to do it to copy of your original file):

Code: Select all

jhead -purejpg yourphoto.jpg
Another option I'm using to get proper ordering of files in file manager by date and time is "-ft". It sets the filesystem timestamp of file equal to time, saved in EXIF. I'm using it after transplanting the EXIF into resulting image:

Code: Select all

jhead -ft yourphoto.jpg

Bushman.K
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Post by Bushman.K »

Another tool I'm using is IrfanView. It's a freeware, just like JHead, but it has graphical user interface (GUI). Runs under Windows.
Official website: http://www.irfanview.com/ (don't forget to download and install plugin pack too, it is useful).

This software is not only a viewer for images, but also a manipulation tool and batch conversion tool. Personally, I'm using these features:

IPTC editing. Go to Image > Information menu (or just press "I") when some image is opened. Dialog will pop up, displaying certain properties of file. By pressing EXIF button you can access list of EXIF metadata, but you can't edit it there even if you want. But Comment and IPTC buttons actually do let you to edit both types of embedded metadata.

In IPTC section you can store almost all kinds of information in text form. And, surprisingly, Flickr users can even put there tags and title before uploading it. Flickr will read it from there. (Flickr tags should be placed into "Keywords" section, every tag on the separate line.)

Other useful function is lossless crop and rotation of JPEG files without recompression. It's located in Options menu (requires plugins to be installed).

RobertOToole
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Post by RobertOToole »

Bushman.K wrote:Another tool I'm using is IrfanView. ....
Good information here Bushman, thanks for sharing. Also using IrfanView.

When I saw the subject line I was going to reply with my own irfanView recommendation.

Robert

Bushman.K
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Post by Bushman.K »

Thank you, Robert.

I'm also going to add some information about ExifTool and how to use it to add certain sets of tags in automated mode.

Chris S.
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Post by Chris S. »

Very useful post, Bushman! :D

I, too use IrfanView a lot, and ExifTool from time to time. JHead is new to me, and sounds useful. With both, I think it's really helpful that you provided examples of what you use each tool for.

--Chris
Last edited by Chris S. on Wed Sep 16, 2015 10:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Bushman.K
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Post by Bushman.K »

Thank you!

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