Tool to write captions / descriptions / etc to IPTC/EXIF fields.

Hello,

I'm looking for someone to write a tool to write captions / descriptions / titles / etc to various IPTC and/or EXIF fields in the image files itself. Ideally this tool would be able to work against a selectable set of albums (on, say, a per-album basis) and automatically take the data assigned for the various G2 fields and write it to the selected IPTC and/or EXIF fields of the image files themselves.

I can see this being used in order to back up info set in G2 by essentially 'burning it in' to the files and I think would make for a great extension to Gallery...

So, is anyone able to do this, and if so, what would the charge be? I'd ideally like to donate to Gallery itself as payment, but this could be discussed.

Thanks!

-Steve

I am also very much interested in this functionality, but no tool exists in Unix to embed data into a file you say??

Steve, I realize this won't help with your old images, but I think that for the future, the easier approach would be the other way around - save the comments and captions to the image file and then extract them with Gallery. Since Gallery can already pull EXIF info, and since tools like Exifer already exist for editing exif info, you would be pretty far along.

Conceptually it's the contrary - Gallery becomes a presentation layer for the EXIF info, but that's easier because that becomes themeable and all that.

Well, I did not mean changing existing header, but creating a new one, what is more difficult. Last time I did research on this, I found that for example "jhead" is unable to do so. Software on your link seems to have a capabilities to create a new EXIF header in the image. Is there someone who actualy tried it?

However there is a *HACK* how to insert EXIF into the image:

http://platon.sk/forum/en/viewtopic.php?t=47

I guess the next question is, does it have to be EXIF?

there a lot of programs that can stick info into image files.

for example
http://steghide.sourceforge.net/

If you had a module that read and wrote this info would that help?

(also might be nice to have for copyrighting purposes)

|| G1 + G2 Hosting | Custom Theming | Donate to Gallery ||

fair enough.

I think the EXIF hack mentioned above could be finagled into doing what you want.
with not to much effort

if you have a default image you keep in the module directory and use it for the "te-" than you should be able to add the information to any jpg that doesn't have it.

also if you used the comments field you could store gallery info without having to compromise the Standard EXIF data

beastie# jhead lola.jpg
File name    : lola.jpg
File size    : 19727 bytes
File date    : 2005:10:25 17:58:29
Camera make  : SONY
Camera model : DSC-S40
Date/Time    : 2005:09:30 09:16:13
Resolution   : 100 x 140
Flash used   : No
Focal length : 11.5mm
Exposure time: 0.033 s  (1/30)
Aperture     : f/4.5
ISO equiv.   : 160
Whitebalance : Auto
Metering Mode: matrix
Exposure     : program (auto)
Jpeg process : Progressive
Comment      : This is the comment Feild that you may want to use
Comment      : G2_Summary: This is the summary
Comment      : G2_Title: This is the title
Comment      : G2_Keywords: Dragon,Bearded,Lola

-Dan

|| G1 + G2 Hosting | Custom Theming | Donate to Gallery ||

I'm not sure if this fact would be helpful to the tool in question, but I'd like to point out that ImageMagick itself has Unix command line IPTC embedding capability.

Here's an example of extracting iptc data:
convert source.jpg 8BIMTEXT:iptc.txt

And here's an example of embedding that iptc data (held in a text file) into a jpg:
mogrify -profile 8BIMTEXT:iptc.txt destination.jpg

Any IPTC data that was there before is erased and replaced with the contents of the simply-formatted text file.

Hope this is useful!

Folks:

It appears that a simple call to jhead using the "-ci" command can add comments if you simply put the "comments" you want into a file first. The "hack" below shows exactly how to do it:

/command/$ jhead IMG_1712.jpg
File name : IMG_1712.jpg
File size : 3045662 bytes
File date : 2005:10:16 09:41:44
Camera make : Canon
Camera model : Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
Date/Time : 2005:01:30 14:19:14
Resolution : 3072 x 2048
Flash used : Yes
Focal length : 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 29mm)
CCD width : 22.66mm
Exposure time: 0.017 s (1/60)
Aperture : f/4.0
ISO equiv. : 400
Metering Mode: matrix
Jpeg process : Baseline

/command/$ echo "Example DESCRIPTION: Hello test" > xx
/command/$ echo "Example TITLE: Great Picture" >> xx
/command/$ jhead -ci xx IMG_1712.jpg
Modified: IMG_1712.jpg

/command/$ jhead IMG_1712.jpg
File name : IMG_1712.jpg
File size : 3045727 bytes
File date : 2005:11:02 21:35:16
Camera make : Canon
Camera model : Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL
Date/Time : 2005:01:30 14:19:14
Resolution : 3072 x 2048
Flash used : Yes
Focal length : 18.0mm (35mm equivalent: 29mm)
CCD width : 22.66mm
Exposure time: 0.017 s (1/60)
Aperture : f/4.0
ISO equiv. : 400
Metering Mode: matrix
Jpeg process : Baseline
Comment : Example DESCRIPTION: Hello test
Comment : Example TITLE: Great Picture

/command/$

[copying another post of mine]
Can it be done, yes. The primary tool to get it working would be ExifTool by Phil Harvey which is able to read and write tags in many formats, including EXIF, GPS, IPTC, and Photoshop IRB. It is a perl command line tool, but should not be too hard to integrate. Simply write all your changes to a text file, and then use the -TagsFromFile option to insert them. From there, it is just writing html forms showing what it available, and processing checkmarks as to what to copy.

If nobody gets to it sooner, I might be able to get at doing it in December. My plate is a little full at the moment.

[EDIT]
Ok. So got started on this. I am about 60% done. I started with the html side first, which is a pain when having to do it in 5 different languages. Here are the screen shots. Edit Captions and EXIF/IPTC Admin

The work I am doing is setup to only edit 1(well 9) pictures at a time. It does not process the whole album recursively. That can be worked on later, but has the pitfalls of do you append or overwrite data, and how do you control which order multiple tags are added to a field.

Not easily at the moment. I have a tendency to stomp on core functions, get something working, and then migrate the functions out into the module as I find room to wiggle. Right now, If I gave you a copy of my changes, it would corrupt your install. Not all of the files I am changing can be placed in a local directory. Give me about two weeks, and I should have something more friendly. As soon as I do, I will send you a PM.

In other discussions, I have found another php EXIF library that I may be able to use, so I have to go off and investigate that as well. Using it would negate the need to call an external perl script for the EXIF writing.

Saving the data stored in the gallery database to IPTC & EXIF tags in the original image file? This is what I need and am in fact desperate for.

I may be willing to help the creation of such a modules in about 6/7 weeks time when I graduate if people want help.

My situation
I'm an image manipulation/photography (serious) emphusiast. I have 10 gigs of images and growing. Organising the number of images is a night mere and completely impossible.

I like to be able to easily see what I have therefore I prefer to only have one level of categories.
I also like to have images in more than one place without duplicating them.
I never know what image organising system might be available tommorrow.
I want to be able to get image details into any application (web based, or desktop) without re-writing the details of every image.

Solution
The only solution of where to store the image details is therefore in IPTC (and EXIF) tags within the image file itself.
The only solution of how to manage the images is to put images into categories using key words and to have search folders.

Futher more
This problem is driving me mad, and i've spend literally HOURS of my time searching for programs (web based or desktop) that will do this. I have found some but theres always a problem e.g. they don't ACTUALY do this (picasa).

Being a final your student studying computer science I have little money (more or less none) to buy software and no time to write it myself.

--
Website: http://me.sllewellyn.com
Gallery: http://www.something-beautiful.org/mygallery

There is a program out there, that can batch generate tags for your images and embed them, based off filename, directory, timestamp, etc. I think its exactly what your looking for. Now. If only I could remember what it was. I'll look around.

Well its certainly better than nothing! However really i think i need a tagging system now merged into something that writes the headers. Can't remember if thats what I put. Basicly its a many-to-many relationship so ive found that a directory structure aint appropriate. I'm really surprised that with the number of digital users these days developers haven't jumped creating such software. I mean surely im not teh only one who has gigs of images?!?!?

In all of my important photos, my originals, I add IPTC info using Arles Image Web Page Creator. This program can add and edit IPTC and JPEG Comment, but only read Exif info. I usually embed info, explanantions, write stories, etc. using IPTC.

When uploading to Gallery, galery can extract the IPTC info into a description field, but it cannot then be edited by Gallery. If the info needs to be changed, it must be changed in the original on my laptop, then the whole photo re-uploaded. It would be therefore a benefit if people could edit the desciption directly in Gallery.

Is there any work being done to include this function, or other people who think this would be good?

Another point, Gallery reads it as text only. I usually write IPTC info in html, as some programs can extract it into a field, and I usually at least use <b> and <p> tags.

Steve Gallagher
http://www.picture.net
Gallery at http://www.gallery.photos.net

Yes, you're correct, PEL only runs on PHP5 (I decided not to be put up with the semi-OOP support offered by PHP4 and made it PHP5 only).

You have a good point about bundling all the functionality into a single dependency, so I fully understand why PEL isn't right for the task.

Martin Geisler — http://mgeisler.net/

Sascha,

I'm not sure if you already implemented a solution to your problem or not. I too had a similar need where I wanted to use Gallery2 as the interface to update the EXIF content of my photos. I wrote a quick perl script that uses the exiflist and exifedit tools from the EXIFUtils tool suite to update the "User Comment" EXIF field with the Title extracted from Gallery. I run this script whenever I want to "flush" the data in Gallery2 out to the EXIF headers of the photos. The script is well structured, and has access to all the data for a given photo item stored in Gallery. The script can be edited to do more powerful things, or take additional data from Gallery2 and update any EXIF field you'd like with it. Right now, I simply take the title and put it in the user comment field. Feel free to take a look. I've attached it here. It's a far cry from a "button" in the web interface, but it's certainly a great start.

I wonder, if there is any update concerning the issue of: "Tool to write captions / descriptions / etc to IPTC/EXIF fields"?
It would be really convenient to be able to tie a bit more the images and the captions.

Thank you for your response:
Istvan