I have a large collection of scanned photos that I am using Exiftool to add metadata to. I would like to keep track of where I sourced the different "collections" of photos from - Mom, Grandma, Dad, Cousin Fred, etc.
While I have a basic folder structure that indicates from who the photos came from, eventually, I plan to merge them together into one collection sorted chronologically and by event, etc. and then tag and keyword accordingly.
My question is I would like to store where I sourced the photos from (Mom, Grandma, etc.) in the metadata. Is there a standard tag for that (I have not found one), or would I need to create a custom field? If custom, any recommendations?
Thanks for your help.
The first thing I would check are the XMP-dc tags (https://exiftool.org/TagNames/XMP.html#dc) since they are very common. There is one called "Source" that sounds like a match for your needs.
Note that you'll have to specify XMP:Source to write this or else ExifTool would write the old IPTC:Source tag.
Hmmm. It seems this writes XMP-photoshop:Source not XMP-dc:Source as I was expecting. But I would trust ExifTool to pick the best one, so all is good and XMP-photoshop:Source it is.
- Phil
Thanks Phil. I'll give that a shot and hopefully not do anything with Photoshop or other tool that would overwrite the tag!
XMP-photoshop:Source is part of the IPTC Photo Metadata Standard (https://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/specification/IPTC-PhotoMetadata#source-supply-chain), so that's probably why it writes that.
The description of "Source" in the IPTC standard
QuoteThe name of a person or party who has a role in the content supply chain. This could be an agency, a member of an agency, an individual or a combination. Source could be different from Creator and from the entities in the Copyright Notice.