OSX SN ExifTool 8.97 "No mountable file systems"

[Grumpie]

Hi;
I'm using Apple's Snow Leopard ver 10.6.8.  Have some old image files that have been copied through several versions of Windows and finally over to a MacBook Pro.  During this process the Creation Date has been corrupted.  Since I'm trying to organized ALL my images in a consistent structure, I've set up an Automator to 1) Re-Name Files using the Creation Date & 2) replace all Windows Illegal file-name characters with an Underscore (so there won't be problems when I send copies to Windows users).  Obviously, for the corrupted Creation Date Files, this is not satisfactory.  Tried several programs & Automator add-ons but they are too tedious and time consuming.

Came across http://studio.messlinger.com/2009/03/08/exiftool-and-the-automator/   This looked promising since I had already had minor experience with ExifTool through GeoSetter, using it for manipulating the metadata.

Downloaded ExifTool-8.97.dmg and opened it.
A small window popped up immediately but disappeared too quickly to read anything,  A short time later another window popped up saying "The following disk images couldn't be opened" with the IMAGE NAME: ExifTool 8.97 & REASON: No mountable file systems".
I understand that this dmg installs files to /user/bin with no Icon generated.  Tried using Terminal to run exiftool and got "command not found".

Could not find anything in Newbies or Install-Problems Forums (though I may have missed it).  Until it is set up properly, I cannot proceed with integrating ExifTool with Automator.

I'm not a programmer, but can usually follow or work through instructions.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Grumpie

[Phil Harvey]

Sorry for the delay in responding.

I just verified that the ExifTool-8.97.dmg distribution file works fine on OS X 10.6.8.  The md5 for the file should be d15353e90bfa8414571e4b7b71cafd9f.  If it isn't, then the file must have been corrupted in the download.  In this case, re-download and try again.

If the md5 is correct, then there is another problem I don't understand.  But there are 3 different ways to install ExifTool on OSX, so you could try another one.  See the install instructions for details.

As well, you don't need to install ExifTool at all to run it.  Just unpack the full distribution tarball and run directly.

- Phil

[Grumpie]

Not a problem with the delay.  Slightly ahead of my capabilities but I'll figure out how to check the md5 ( know it is a calculated value from the info in the file ).
Will work through & try each method and then report back my findings.
Thanks for you work on ExifTools.

[Alan Clifford]

but I'll figure out how to check the md5

It should be as simple as

md5 ~/Downloads/ExifTool-8.97.dmg

on the command line