Test File Args file

[StarGeek]

Added a small jpg with all the data embedded for ease of use.  It needs to be zipped due to the security checks of the forum.

[blue-j]

Thanks so much for making this file!!!  This will leap us forward!  : )

- J

[ScannerBoy]

Resurrecting this thread, if that is OK?
Just came across it, as I was attempting to write metadata to some of my files and wanted to see if I understood the process.
The data covered looks very comprehensive, but it seems to me that none of the alternate language possibilities, or UTF-8 outside the plain ASCII range, are covered.
I may well have missed those as I am much a newb on the subject, but it is of major interest to me since my main application is for genealogy and 'foreign' languages seem inevitable.

The best place to locate which tags can accept such 'esoteric' data would probably be the comprehensive list on the Exiftool pages, but it is the proper application for writing the data which, at this stage, is not at all obvious to me.

It seems that images with such strings/data are rather scarce and hard to find.
Running under Win 10, ET 12.15

[StarGeek]

but it seems to me that none of the alternate language possibilities, or UTF-8 outside the plain ASCII range, are covered.

No, they're not part of it.  I use this test file to see what tags that a program can read, not to see if they can read alternate languages.  It figures out data like this

The best place to locate which tags can accept such 'esoteric' data would probably be the comprehensive list on the Exiftool pages, but it is the proper application for writing the data which, at this stage, is not at all obvious to me.

It seems that images with such strings/data are rather scarce and hard to find.

I'm not sure what the question is here.

[ScannerBoy]

No, they're not part of it.  I use this test file to see what tags that a program can read, not to see if they can read alternate languages.  It figures out data like this

Not trying to be difficult, but those alternate languages are an important part of the standards, and if these were covered by a 'test' program or data set, it would make it much more valuable

I'm not sure what the question is here.

It is more of an explanation, rather than a question, but if anyone can point me to either sample images or more details, I would be very grateful.
Frustratingly enough, even the IPTC sample images stick to plain ASCCI text strings
See: https://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/examples/

[StarGeek]

Not trying to be difficult, but those alternate languages are an important part of the standards, and if these were covered by a 'test' program or data set, it would make it much more valuable

This file isn't meant to test standards.  It's basically a quick and easy FAQ #3 test file.  It already contains far more tags than most people will ever use.

And the lang-alt are rarely used by most people.  The only place I've seen them used is GettyImages and even then it's pretty rare.  And if someone needs to test lang-alt tags, it's easy enough to create a test.  Just take any XMP tag that is listed as lang-alt writable, add a dash and a ISO 639 language code.  For example
exiftool -Description-fra="French Description" file.jpg

See the 5th paragraph on the XMP tags page.

The lang-alt tags are extremely fragile, though.  I don't know of any program that allows editing of them.  A quick test with Adobe Bridge showed that in any change to the main tag caused the lang-alt tags to be overwritten with the new data.  I don't know if other Adobe products will do the same or not.

It is more of an explanation, rather than a question, but if anyone can point me to either sample images or more details, I would be very grateful.
Frustratingly enough, even the IPTC sample images stick to plain ASCCI text strings

I believe FAQ #10 will cover this.

[ScannerBoy]

This file isn't meant to test standards.  It's basically a quick and easy FAQ #3 test file.  It already contains far more tags than most people will ever use.

Agreed, but it is very useful for that purpose and I am very pleased to have found it. Thank you for setting it up & posting it.

And the lang-alt are rarely used by most people.  The only place I've seen them used is GettyImages and even then it's pretty rare.  And if someone needs to test lang-alt tags, it's easy enough to create a test.  Just take any XMP tag that is listed as lang-alt writable, add a dash and a ISO 639 language code.  For example
exiftool -Description-fra="French Description" file.jpg
See the 5th paragraph on the XMP tags page.

I will certainly work with this

The lang-alt tags are extremely fragile, though.  I don't know of any program that allows editing of them.

That is at the root of my problem. I do need the facility and have looked a fair bit, but without much luck.
Some programs claim to handle these type of strings, but it seems the command line version of Exiftool is about the only one I have found reliable enough to use as my 'standard' - but see below

A quick test with Adobe Bridge showed that in any change to the main tag caused the lang-alt tags to be overwritten with the new data.  I don't know if other Adobe products will do the same or not.

Yes, I have had my issues with the Adobe toolkit over the very same issues.

I believe FAQ #10 will cover this.

Thank you, yes it does explain a lot.
At the same time, I realize that I have to learn a whole lot myself and working under Windows is a severe handicap, especially with respect to these language and encoding issues.
Even running Exiftool at the command prompt is very confusing and sometimes downright wrong in this respect, because both the plain DOS box and Powershell are very deficient when it comes to handling foreign character sets.
If it weren't for the excellent debugger of MSVC, I am sure I'd be running some Linux flavor.
Still looking for alternatives to Powershell and I have experimented some with M$'s latest shell(s), but without much luck so far.

[wywh]

XMP-mediapro:Event is not yet in that monster MetadataTestFile.jpg.

- Matti

[StarGeek]

Yeah, there are a bunch of newer, uncommon tags not in the files. They're unlikely to be read outside specific programs, but there's no harm in adding them.

It's been nearly four years since I updated this, so it's about time to check again. Thanks for reminder.

[wywh]

XMP-mediapro:Event is not yet in that monster MetadataTestFile.jpg.

Also XMP-iptcExt:Event is missing

[FrankB]

@Stargeek

While you're at it. Could you please check Exif:ExposureCompensation?
There might be a reason why it's not in that args file, but I can't think of why.


Thanks,
Frank

[StarGeek]

Oh yeah, I was going to update this. Sorta forgot about that. Post-it note going on my monitor to remind me.

While you're at it. Could you please check Exif:ExposureCompensation?
There might be a reason why it's not in that args file, but I can't think of why.

I didn't add a lot of the more technical EXIF tags because, while there are XMP equivalents to most of them, it seemed to me to be extremely unlikely that the XMP tags would be used anywhere except in an XMP sidecar file. And they are also unlikely that a program reading the data will give it any name other than the actual EXIF name. Is there an actual case where you have to figure out if the tag is EXIF:ExposureCompensation or XMP-exif:ExposureCompensation?

One of the main reasons I made this file was to figure out what tags were actually read when a program displayed metadata. Windows is one of the main examples, as the Property names it displays can be completely different from what the tag is used for (see "Title" on the Windows Metadata post).

A similar reason was to figure out what data websites such as Google Photos was displaying. Flickr is great in this regards because they use exiftool on the back end and can provide a complete exiftool listing when you hit "Show EXIF". But on many other sites it wasn't clear what they were reading.

[FrankB]

Thanks for replying quickly and detailed.

When I read your reply I get the feeling that I'm not using the Args file what it is intended for. So you can ignore my request.

Is there an actual case where you have to figure out if the tag is EXIF:ExposureCompensation or XMP-exif:ExposureCompensation?

Let me explain what I was trying to do.
In ExifToolGui a user can switch the filelist details to 'Camera settings'. Until now it is not possible to customize the columns. I'm trying to add that in ExifToolGui V6.3.6.
(Pre-release V6.3.6. screenshot)


I was thinking to use the JPG and ARGS file to test my program changes. As you can see the ExposureCompensation has no value.

First I suspected my coding changes, but even the 'Bogdan version V516' did not show anything. So I checked the ARGS file, to find out that the column wasn't updated.
Note: The Bogdan GUI version V516 always reads the ExposureCompensation from Exif. I do not want to change that default in V636.

GUI V516:



Thanks for your time,
Frank

Edit: Changed V5.3.6 to V6.3.6. (V5.3.6 never existed!)

[StarGeek]

When I read your reply I get the feeling that I'm not using the Args file what it is intended for. So you can ignore my request.

It wasn't my intended use, but you've shown another possible use. So I'll go ahead and add the other EXIF tags. And see if there are any other tags I'm missing that I can shove in there.

I also think I'll reorganize it a bit. I want to separate the tags that don't allow simple strings and would have the name of the tag. The ones where you would have to look in this file to see what the actual tag is. I'll also change some of the values if needed to make sure that no two tags have the same value. I think the date/time tags are already set like this.

[FrankB]

It wasn't my intended use, but you've shown another possible use. So I'll go ahead and add the other EXIF tags. And see if there are any other tags I'm missing that I can shove in there.

Thanks.

Superfluous maybe, but this tag shows as 'Exposure bias' in Windows Properties under 'Camera'.

Frank