Write IPTC tag to EXIF:ImageDescription

[Jonz]

Hi

I've been trying to use ExifTool running in a DOS window (Windows 7) to do the following:

Process a directory of jpgs copying the IPTC:Headline tag content to an EXIF:ImageDescription tag. The EXIF:ImageDescription tag does not exist in the source files.

I can't seem to get this to work and would appreciate any help.

Thanks very much,

Jonathan

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Jonathan,

The command is:

exiftool "-exif:imagedescription<iptc:headline" DIR

where DIR is the name of a directory containing the images.

- Phil

[Jonz]

Thanks very much! Is it possible to do this with support for accents etc (UTF8 is listed as the codedcharacterset in IPTC).

[Phil Harvey]

This command will work for special characters too, but there are some complications which may cause unexpected results:

1) The EXIF:ImageDescription tag does not officially support UTF-8, although some applications (like ExifTool) don't have a problem with this.

2) Character encoding in IPTC is problematic.  CodedCharacterSet must be set properly in the IPTC information.  If it isn't set, the exiftool -charset IPTC=XXX option may be used to specify the IPTC encoding.

This is all explained in FAQ number 10.

- Phil