I have recently been playing with Windows Live Photo Gallery and Skydrive. I went on an Alaska Cruise (I highly recommend it) and shot lots of pictures. I created a subset of reduced sized pictures and captioned them and put them on Skydrive. Now I realize that I really want those captions on the full size pics.
It looks like Exiftool has that capability but I can't quite grasp the command structure. Since both the reduced and full sized pictures have the same names but are in different folders, can I use:
exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.mie
Copy all meta information in its original form from a JPEG image to
a MIE file. The MIE file will be created if it doesn't exist. This
technique can be used to store the metadata of an image so it can
be inserted back into the image (with the inverse command) later in
a workflow.
and a batch file to step thru the captioned file folder and then use the "inverse command" (whatever that is) to step thru the full size folder? Or, maybe, process one reduced file and its full size brother and then go to the next. In truth, I think I only want to write the XMP:Title and XMP:Description fields.
I have another similar question here and the answers to that may provide what I need and probably I just need to be pointed to a previous thread but I would appreciate any hints and helps or even comments whether I am on the right track.
-----Paul-----
Hi Paul,
Sorry for the delay in responding. I was on vacation.
I think you may want a command something like this:
exiftool -tagsfromfile SRCFOLDER/%f.%e -xmp:title -xmp:description DSTFOLDER
- Phil
Again, thank you for your concise replies. Is there somewhere a discussion of the difference between -all and -tagsfrom file? They seem very similar yet are apparently different.
-----Paul------
Hi Paul,
I don't understand the question.
-all represents all available tags. -tagsfromfile FILE specifies to set new values from tags in a file (all tags by default, equivalent to -tagsfromfile FILE -all).
- Phil
Obviously it is I that does not understand. These two examples from the help file have me confused.
exiftool -TagsFromFile src.jpg -all:all dst.mie
Copy all meta information in its original form from a JPEG image to
a MIE file. The MIE file will be created if it doesn't exist. This
technique can be used to store the metadata of an image so it can
be inserted back into the image (with the inverse command) later in
a workflow.
exiftool -o dst.mie -all:all src.jpg
This command performs exactly the same task as the command above,
except that the "-o" option will not write to an output file that
already exists.
-----Paul-----
Hi Paul,
Are things any clearer if I tell you that the -o DSTFILE option is equivalent to using -tagsFromFile SRCFILE if the output file is a different type? (The only difference is that the -o option will abort if the destination file already exists.)
- Phil
Ummm, well, OK.
So the proper generic command structures are -tagsfromfile srcfile dstfile or -o dstfile srcfile?
and I could substitute one for the other in all the examples?
-----Paul-----
You should be able to interchange these, but only if the source and destination files are different formats. If the output file is the same format, then the -o option will write the image in the destination, but the -tagsfromfile won't. If you think about it, you should understand why this is so.
- Phil
Edit: Changed "overwrite" to "write" because -o won't overwrite an existing image.
OK, thanks. Off to put on my thinking cap.
-----Paul-----