Good morning,
having bought a Reflecta DigitDia6000 to scan my slides with SilverFast Ai Studio 8 (from LaserSoft Imaging, LSI) I had in mind, archiving the raw data (TIFF) in the first place. Since SilverFast allows only a limited set of metadata (Vuescan even less) I wanted to use EXIFtool to add my preferred set of metadata to each file for documentation. Then in a second step I wanted to use SilverFast HDR Studio 8 to process the raw data (colour correction, dust removal etc.) and create JPG files from the raw data for presentations, photoCDs, what have you.
And here comes the problem: If I e.g. geotag the raw tif-files with EXIFtoolGUI, Silverfast HRD is no longer able to process them -- most of the contrast in the images is gone or HDR even crashes. LSI states, that external software is known to overwrite the data they store in the header and which are needed for later processing with HDR. Therefore one must not change/add tags with external software, they say. But this is not the idea of metadata! I attach an example of a raw scan output. No metadata were specified in SilverFast. The example file was not yet touched with EXIFtool.
Could it really be that EXIFtool overwrites part of the header or is this a problem of SilverFast? Of course I could leave the raw data as they are and only add my metadata set to the processed JPGs, but this is not the ideal archiving solution.
Any hints on a possible way out are very welcome!
Many thanks and best wishes
Hermann-Josef
Hi Hermann-Josef,
Excuse my language, but what a load of crap. If SilverFast can't read the image after ExifTool has edited it, then it is simply a crappy piece of software. I looked at your image, and there is no information that is lost after it is edited using ExifTool. You can see this yourself using the ExifTool -htmldump feature. (Only the brown "unused" sections will not be preserved -- there is no header data that will be lost.)
So if Silverfast can't read the resulting image, the problem is that SilverFast programmers don't understand the TIFF format. Simple as that. In the past I have seen really brain-dead software that assumes some information is at a fixed offset in a TIFF image. God help us if the SilverFast programmers are that dumb. You will notice that things are moved around after editing with ExifTool, but software that properly follows the TIFF offsets will have no problem with this.
- Phil
Hi Phil,
thank you so much for your very fast and clear reply.
With your information as background, I will call LSI support. I had started a thread in the SilverFast forum on this topic. But this forum is very inefficient. Each and every contribution has to be activated by LSI staff! So the turnaround for an answer is on the order of a week. This is ages compared to your forum and others I am active in.
Many thanks indeed and I will post the answer from LSI here as soon as I get one. I would imagine that other SilverFast users might have the same problem.
Best wishes
Hermann-Josef
Hi Phil,
in the SilverFast forum I just got a reply with 2 questions concerning the problems outlined above:
1) Did I change the creator tag? SilverFast looks for the creator tag to see if the data were produced by SilverFast.
No, I did not. As I had written, I just geotagged the file.
2) Does EXIFtool handle multi-layer TIF-Files?
My answer was, I do not know for sure, but will ask. But I added, since the metadata have nothing to do with the
data structure itself, I thought this question is not relevant for the problem.
At the end I asked, if SilverFast assumes the data put into the header from the scan to be later used by HDR are located at a fixed position within the header. Let's see what I get as a reply.
Best wishes
Hermann-Josef
Hi Hermann-Josef,
1) You do need to be sure that the tags you write don't already exist in the image. I thought this went without saying, but it is a good point.
2) Yes, ExifTool handles multi-layer TIFF images.
You really should take a look at the -htmldump output if you haven't already. This is the best tool I have seen for analyzing TIFF images, and if more software developers knew about this ExifTool feature there wouldn't be as much buggy TIFF software out there. (Honestly, I have seen so many problems in other software when it comes to reading/writing the TIFF format that it makes me cry.)
- Phil
Oh wow. I just noticed something in htmldump output that I didn't see before...
I may have to eat my words. ExifTool does change the maker notes in this image because it thinks that it contains a TIFF IFD, but it seems that the IFD test gives a false positive in this case.
Darn. This could cause the problem you observed.
I'll patch this in the next ExifTool update, and release the new version tomorrow.
- Phil
Good evening Phil,
thank you for the update. If this would solve the problem, that would be wonderful! I was already afraid, I have to change my whole strategy. I very much appreciate your fast repsonse and help!
Best wishes
Hermann-Josef
There. 9.19 is out. Please let me know how things go.
- Phil
Hi Phil,
unfortunately there is a problem. I just replaced the old version of exiftool.exe by the new one. But now EXIFtoolGUI crashes with either "Invalid pointer" or with "access violation" as soon as I klick on a file name in the selection box. I have to kill the GUI with the task manager.
Is there anything else I have to do with the new version which I forgot?
Best wishes
Hermann-Josef
Hi Hermann,
The most likely problem is that the new ExifTool didn't extract itself cleanly into the temporary directory. I don't know why this happens, but I have seen it a number of times before. Try erasing the ExifTool temporary files and running again. In Windows 7, they are usually in:
\Users\USER\AppData\Local\Temp
Hopefully it is as simple as this, but I am a bit worried because this sounds like a GUI problem and not an ExifTool problem.
- Phil
Hi Phil,
I am a bit confused. I used the WINDOWS executable, so there was nothing to unpack into a temporary file. I just opened the zip-file with 7zip and copied the exiftool(-k).exe into my EXIFtool directory. There I removed the (-k) from the file name.
Best wishes
Hermann-Josef
Hi Hermann,
The "exiftool(-k).exe" application is a self-extracting package. It expands into the temporary directory I mentioned.
I also did a search and found two other threads with this same problem (one (https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php/topic,4048.msg18998.html#msg18998), two (https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php/topic,3962.msg18887.html#msg18887)), and this fix worked in both cases.
- Phil
Hi Phil,
obviously I am stuck -- and puzzled.
I followed your advice and deleted the temporary files. But still I always get exiftool.exe crashing whenever I select a file within the GUI. It is not the GUI that is crashing but exiftool.exe itself. I have restarted the computer and deleted over and over again the temporary files. No change... I also have downloaded the files again in case something was broken. It did not help.
So now I was desparate and went back to version 9.15, and it works! So I would assume that I do things correctly, but something is wrong with the new version.
Sorry for all the trouble I create ...
Best wishes
Hermann-Josef
Hi Hermann,
I just dragged out a Windows system and tried this myself, and it worked, so I think the distribution is OK.
But now we're having nameserver problems on our network so I'm not even sure you can access this forum right now.
Anyway. Did you try running "exiftool(-k).exe" directly by dragging and dropping a file onto it? Take note of the version number in the output if it does work. If not, try deleting the temporary files (once again), then run it again. This time there should be a lag of at least a few additional seconds as it unpacks itself. If it starts up just as quickly this time, then you didn't delete the right temporary files. They should be in a "par-USER/cache-exiftool-9.91" directory I think, inside your temporary directory.
Thanks for your patience. We should be able to figure this out.
- Phil
I have another report that 9.19 crashes when writing. I have retracted the Windows release and will issue another release ASAP.
- Phil
The Windows version of 9.20 is now available.
I could reproduce the crash problem in 9.19 by running a write test on my suite of test files. Version 9.20 looks good though. Sorry about this. I'll be running this write test on all Windows releases from now on.
- Phil
Good morning Phil,
on the EXIFtool-webpage I saw the Windows executable version 9.20 and downloaded it. Tagged with 9.20 the output of SilverFast HDR is now identical to the untagged original, also processed with HDR. I attach an example as PDF.
This is great! Thank you very much indeed for your support!
I am convinced that other SilverFast users will also benefit from this accomplishment! I will also let LSI know about this.
Best wishes
Hermann-Josef
Hi Hermann,
This is good news, thanks for your patience, and my apologies for all of the problems.
- Phil