Hi,
I've tried searching but have drawn a blank
I've tens of thousands of photos that I've finally decided to properly organise.
I've noticed that lots have incorrect / missing info - main one is DateTaken becoming DateCreated which is when I've copied file from one location to another (I think). Maddening but thankfully I saved them in dated folders so I know what correct dates should be - just gotta wade thorugh and edit them all.
Whilst I'm doing this I figured I should correct all other metadata whilst I'm at it - but I'm unsure which fields are "meant" to have what in / which I can use for my own.
I want to eventually run a batch rename on my collection so they all end up in one tree, based on dates, with the final file name something like (it's a work in progress and may be tweaked)
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS ~ Country ~ City ~ General Description (something like e.g. "Dads 70th Birthday") ~ Individual Photo Description (e.g. "Me and Dad", "The Cake" etc)
Basically I want to dump as much Exif data as I can into the filename so that in the future should a program / operating system bugger the Exif up I can retrieve things / won't care ;D
So is there a simple guide somewhere as to which Exif fields best correlate to my usage model ??
You're asking which tags to use for generating the file name? I would suggest maybe using the MWG tags (https://exiftool.org/TagNames/MWG.html) for this.
As far as the file name goes, your format looks good, but I would avoid using colons in the name, particularly if you are on Windows. You also should be careful that the tag values contributing to the file name are filtered properly to avoid illegal characters. This is easy to do using ExifTool by specifying something like this:
exiftool "-filename<${mwg:datetimeoriginal;tr/:/-/} ~ ${mwg:country;} ~ ${mwg:city;} ~ ${mwg:description;}.%e" DIR
The empty advanced formatting expression used for each tag except DateTimeOriginal has the effect of filtering out characters that are illegal in Windows.
I haven't addressed your first problem of setting DateTimeOriginal from the current directory structure, but that should be possible depending on how the directories are named.
- Phil
Cheers for all that
Unfortunately my folder structure is to haphazard to reliably automate grabbing dates from but its enough for a human to translate - just a bit more tedious - my wife prefers to name folders "August Holiday 2016"
Once I've everything in place I'll just run that script / come back for final tweaks ;-)
Quote from: dmee on May 04, 2017, 10:24:12 AMmain one is DateTaken becoming DateCreated which is when I've copied file from one location to another (I think).
One thing to take note of is that there isn't a Date Taken tag. This is a Windows property that is populated from a variety of tags, depending upon what Windows can find. See this post (https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php/topic,6591.msg32875.html#msg32875).
QuoteSo is there a simple guide somewhere as to which Exif fields best correlate to my usage model ??
Not one that is both good and simple that I've been able to find. There are the MWG guidance pdf (http://www.metadataworkinggroup.org/pdf/mwg_guidance.pdf) and the IPTC Standard Photo Metadata pdf (//http://), plus other specs, but those aren't simple.