Need to rename artist...

[j99mac]

exiftool -if 'not $artist' -artist="me" DIR

And get the fallowing results

   1 directories scanned
    0 image files read

there away to get it to add me if artist is blank? or get it to show me the result if the tad has something in it.

[StarGeek]

Your command is correct, but as the output shows, there aren't any files in the directory you gave exiftool.  If there were files to process in that directory, you would have at least gotten "x files failed".

Did you forget to add the -r (-recurse) option to recurse into subdirectories?

[j99mac]

I am getting the error
Error: Not a valid TIFF (looks more like a MacOS

when running the fallowing  exiftool -if '$artist eq ""' -artist="me" dir
I change "me" to what I need the artist to be and dir to a file location
The file I am running on did not currently have an artist.

I would normally run this command to add artist
exiftool -r "$path" -r -overwrite_original -Exif:Artist="$Artist"

I would like to run it and have it only run on the files that are missing artist tag or update file that need it.

[StarGeek]

Duplicate post removed.

Check your quotes.  If you're using Windows CMD, then use double quotes on the outside, single inside of that, e.g. -if "$artist eq '' ". The command you have listed would be what you would run under Windows PowerShell/Mac/Linux.

It would be very helpful if you remember to copy/paste you're entire output every time and use the [code][/code] button to format the output (and only the output) properly.
See this post