How to add a "soft crop" frame visible in Photoshop

[art11s]

As part of our workflow, photo producers would open an image in Photoshop and tone the "soft cropped" area (just a box marked inside the full size image). Before that step I need to insert the crop metadata into an image, that would display the crop box when opened in Photoshop. One way to generate a soft crop box in Photoshop is to insert a path or clipPath. Is it possible to add those using ExifTool? If not, are there any alternatives?

[Phil Harvey]

You would need to add user-defined tags to be able to write the information you want.  Once this is done, it should be possible to copy the information you want from one file to another.  See this thread for more details.

- Phil

[art11s]

Thanks for you reply.  That thread has most of the information I need.  Just wanted to clarify,  my crop metadata is stored outside the image, so I'm trying to insert a new tag and not doing a copy.  I assume I need to use the -TAG option for that.  Since I'm only adding 1 path, can I just hardcode the name on the command line, something like  -TAG Photoshop:Path7d0 ?  Or do I still have to predefine the tag name in the config file?

[Phil Harvey]

My crop metadata is stored outside the image, so I'm trying to insert a new tag and not doing a copy.

Stored outside the image how?  These path tags typically store binary data, which would be difficult to generate on the command line, and easier to copy from another file.

Since I'm only adding 1 path, can I just hardcode the name on the command line, something like  -TAG Photoshop:Path7d0 ?  Or do I still have to predefine the tag name in the config file?

All tags you want to write need to be either pre-defined as writable, or user-defined in the config file to be able to write them.

- Phil

[art11s]

I'm getting a feed with an image and corresponding metadata in an xml file.  Looks like the biggest challenge would be generating the binary value.  Do you know if Adobe provides any libraries or specifications for that?

[Phil Harvey]

Lucky you.  Adobe finally made the PSD specification public last year:  http://www.adobe.com/devnet-apps/photoshop/fileformatashtml/

- Phil