write keywords to multiple jpegs across diff directories

[orbspider]

Is there any way to do this, write keywords to a list of files, using their file paths?

I'm tired of Picasa loosing my starred photos when I move over to a new pc -in this case move over to Ubuntu.  I managed to save my list of starred pics and batch replace the file path beginnings (using Z:/.. instead of E:/..) but still picasa dumped half of the list.

So what i need is to write a keyword tag, like "star" to all the jpegs in my saved starlist.  then they will be safe for ever.  There are like 13000+ pics in the list.  could exiftool search a list file for the file names?  I also don't need exiftool to make back-ups of the files.

exiftool -keywords+="star" [what next?]

[Phil Harvey]

If you have the file names in a text file (called "files.txt" for example), with each file name on a separate line, you can do this:

exiftool -keywords+="star" -@ files.txt

- Phil

[orbspider]

my starlist file has all the file locations, it would take me ages to remove them all

can file names have spaces? because my test with 2 file names didn't work (I back-slashed the space as well)

[Phil Harvey]

can file names have spaces? because my test with 2 file names didn't work

Yes.  The input .txt file should look something like this:

Code Select Expand

c:\some directory name\some sub directory\some file.jpg
c:\some other directory name\some other sub directory\some other file.jpg
...

- Phil

[orbspider]

in ubuntu? using c:/ ??

isn't it like \media\disk\folder\folder\picture.jpg 

no sorry, like /media/disk/folder/folder/picture.jpg   AND it worked this time.

cheers a lot

[Phil Harvey]

Sorry, I missed the fact you were on a Unix system.  Of course, use directory specifications appropriate to your system.

Glad you figured this out.

- Phil