Does ExifTool have the equivalent of a REM command-line option?

[mpegleg]

Ah ok. Thanks. I saw the message splashed on the Adobe site saying that it was free. They obviously have a funny definition of "free". It's got strings attached. No, I don't subscribe to CC. It would be a waste for me at present, so I guess I won't bother with the Bridge. Probably don't really need it anyway. My life is too complicated as it is.

Thanks for your advice.

-Paul

[StarGeek]

Adobe Bridge is basically just an image browser with (a.o.) excellent integration with Photoshop and Camera Raw and the ability to view and edit metadata (not in any way comparable to the capabilities of exiftool, of course).

Well said.  The question got me thinking about what it actually was and to be honest, I never seriously used to beyond testing things to really get to know what it was.

I don't think you can install it for free if you don't own/subscribe to Adobe CC though.

It actually has been free on it's own for quite a while, though these days it might require creating an adobe account.  I'm not sure.  I've had it installed for a while now.  I don't think it starts the whole Adobe CC background stuff, I don't see running in task manager when I start it, but I could be wrong.

[mpegleg]

StarGeek. Yeah, it sounds like it's not worth installing Adobe Bridge for my minimal use. I already have too many progs on my pc. I don't even remember what most of them they do, let alone why I installed them in the first place.

I do have an Adobe account. Not that I really use it. You are forced to have one these days if you have ANY sort of Adobe product, and that includes Photoshop Elements too. (Except Adobe Acrobat Reader of course).

[mpegleg]

Forgive my use of some of these irrelevant off-topic posts, but I don't think it would be useful to start a new topic for each (probably seemingly, blindingly obvious) simple newbie question.

I'm reading through many topics, and any examples I see that I don't really fully understand, I'm testing them out to see "what blows up" what it does. I learn by example, not by mounds of cryptic text.

I saw this example used [here], and [here]:

exiftool -o . "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d %Y/%m/%d dir

and was wondering (with Windows 10 OS) what the "." does after the -o option? (At first I thought it was just a typo), but it's certainly very important, but startling as it may seem... my forum search of "." wasn't too successful.

As one of our most noteworthy and controversial Politicians here in Australia was fond of sternly saying: "Please Explain." _{(but she never asked with a smiley face!)}

Feel free to hyperlink me.

[mpegleg]

Ah. I found the reference. No need to explain!

[StarGeek]

exiftool -o . "-Directory<DateTimeOriginal" -d %Y/%m/%d dir

and was wondering (with Windows 10 OS) what the "." does after the -o option? (At first I thought it was just a typo), but it's certainly very important, but startling as it may seem... my forum search of "." wasn't too successful.

The dot represents the current directory (see Wikipedia, Absolute and relative paths).  The -o (outfile) option requires a second parameter, the file path/name of the file to write to.  But if you use either the Directory or Filename pseudo-tags, then any directory specified there will take precedent over the -o options (see last sentence of the first paragraph of the -o (outfile) option).

Ah. I found the reference. No need to explain!

Tough, I already typed all that out, I'm posting it anyway! 

 

[mpegleg]

Thank you anyway! The more explanation, the better.

[mpegleg]

Another quickie, if I may?

It's an "Advanced Tag name" _{(so straight away I hear you all groaning)} called HardLink, on this page

_{Note: If there's a way of directly hyperlinking to that "Hardlink" word on that page please let me know. I love very direct hyperlinks.}

I'm not quite sure of the syntax, as to whether I need to internally pipe it with the "<" operator, or just do this:

exiftool -HardLink image.jpg  <-- EDIT: Note I did this on my mapped NAS UNIX based drive, in case that makes a difference.

which seemed to do both nothing, (no error messages) and something at the same time, but nothing blew up, and there were no explosions. At least not yet.

So I'm wondering, what, if anything it did, and what is the correct syntax to make use of it? Examples please.

I couldn't see any documentation on the syntax use. (Probably intentional - ie. keep n00bs like me away from it). FAIL

I do use Windows symlinks (symbolic links), so I understand the concept of the those, "if" that's what it's actually doing.


EDIT: I just saw that there is a SymLink advanced tag as well, so that duplicates the standard symlinks. Even so, how do you use them in an ExifTool command? It seems to me that there are all these quite useful advanced tag names available, yet there are no practical examples of how to really make use of them. Yes, I do understand that they are mainly used in 3rd party application software using ExifTool, but even so, it would be great to see some standalone usage examples. Is it because none of them require any arguments?

[StarGeek]

_{Note: If there's a way of directly hyperlinking to that "Hardlink" word on that page please let me know. I love very direct hyperlinks.}

Nope, no direct anchors to specific tags on the tag pages, just to groups. 

I also love direct links, that's why I use this addon.

I'm not quite sure of the syntax, as to whether I need to internally pipe it with the "<" operator, or just do this:

exiftool -HardLink image.jpg  <-- EDIT: Note I did this on my mapped NAS UNIX based drive, in case that makes a difference.

You need to set -HardLink equal to something, e.g. exiftool -HardLink="/new/directory/%F" -r /path/to/lots/of/subdirectories/  Example post where hardlinks are used to make a "temp" directory of all the files in a csv file that doesn't have to full paths.  Symlinks should be the same, you set it equal to the new file name.  Not completely sure since I've never used them.

See this MS page which details what hardlinks can do and the limitations.

Previous post discussing hard/symlinks.

[mpegleg]

Once again, thanks StarGeek.

Some good info and links there. Enough to get me understanding the concepts, and possibly even the possibility of an alternative to having to worry about flaky "Hidden" file attributes, for my photo originals.

[mpegleg]

Warning: SymLink not supported in Windows

Awww. That's disappointing. I sometimes use Windows soft symlinks via Link Shell Extension.

[obetz]

Forgive my use of some of these irrelevant off-topic posts, but I don't think it would be useful to start a new topic for each (probably seemingly, blindingly obvious) simple newbie question.

what about selecting a non-misleading (IOW neutral) subject for these posts then, e.g. something with "misc" or "chat"? Create a new if it gets longer than two or three pages.

You might consider not to add new topics to this thread since it has a specific subject.

Warning: SymLink not supported in Windows

Awww. That's disappointing. I sometimes use Windows soft symlinks via Link Shell Extension.

Although Windows resp. NTFS supports symlinks since nearly two decades now, it has drawbacks:

• "out of the box", you need elevated rights (or Win 10 "developer mode" since few years) to create a symlink. Most users don't know ho to change system policies to allow normal users to create them.
• The makers of Perl don't seem to take Windows seriously. There is no built-in support for symlinks and the user contributions working around this might be not as mature as they should.

You can use scripts working on ExifTool output to create symlinks with mklink or other tools.

[mpegleg]

Thanks Oliver. I'll add a new misc topic now, as I can see that if I stick around these parts for a while, I'm going to have many misc n00b questions.

You can use scripts working on ExifTool output to create symlinks with mklink or other tools.

Do you have any possible links of script examples for me to check out, otherwise I'll try doing a forum search for them.

Cheers,
-Paul

[mpegleg]

I also love direct links, that's why I use this addon.

Thanks StarGeek. I've made use of that "Display #Anchors" Chrome extension already! Top Tip.