Getting Gimp to work with XMP

[lenzie]

Phil,

first thanks for your work on exiftool. together with exiftoolGUI, it is the only tool I trust to work with the metadata.

You are probably aware of GIMP, and the fact that gimp does not handle metadata properly. So, I raised a bug report ...
(https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=690089)

After a bit of problems getting communication, I've now been directed to the README file
(https://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/tree/plug-ins/metadata/README) which
more or less seems to sum up the current state:

- It does not read metadata, except if there is an XMP block in the
  image file.
- It does not write metadata, it can only export XMP into a separate
  file.
- It does not edit metadata, except for some very limited editing of
  basic scalar types (strings, integers, ...).  It is currently not
  possible to add new properties using the editor (but this can be
  done via the PDB call plug_in_metadata_set_simple()).
- Basically, the current code is only useful for viewing some XMP
  metadata if the image file contains an XMP block.

In short, you can view the metadata in an image ... then it gets trashed when you save it.

As a total novice both to XMP and GIMP coding, .... I'm totally out of my depth - but clearly the GIMP team are struggling to find anyone to help make this work.

where would one start to even understand the problem let alone trying to help resolve it?

... where does one find "the dummy's guide to XMP?" (let alone IPTC, EXIF)

[Phil Harvey]

There is no dummy's guide, but if you check the appropriate ExifTool modules you will find a list of the references that I found useful.

This situation is not all that uncommon in image editors... The image manipulation comes first and the metadata often gets overlooked.

- Phil