Create a new Tag

[voxleone]

Greetings everyone. As OP I am a newbie. I hope I did the right thing by resurrecting this old thread [it's perfect for my issue].

I'm developing a project – to be brought to discussion in the next few days – which requires the creation of tags, and it would be very interesting if this functionality were more highlighted in the docs. For example, an entry on the examples page.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, my installed distribution [from conda-forge] does not seem to contain example.config. Am I missing something?

(*) I rediscovered the joy of pearl. I can't forgive myself for discovering ET so late. Thank you again.

[Phil Harvey]

I assume you mean the definition of custom user-defined tags, because you can create standard tags in a file without this.  (There has been some confusion about this in the past.)

But it is good to hear from someone that actually reads the documentation (I'm presuming the exiftool application documentation).  You're right, that documentation doesn't mention user-defined tags other than linking from the -config option to the sample config file.  As well as this, there is a lot of other documentation that is only available via the full ExifTool package and/or the web site.  However I will enhance the -config documentation to mention user-defined tags.

- Phil

[StarGeek]

What is the type of data you want to embed?  As there are thousands of standard tags and it is likely that there are existing tags that will cover your need.  The IPTC Photo Metadata Standard is a good place to start looking to see if your use case is already covered.

In my opinion, it is rarely a good idea to make custom tags, as very few programs outside of exiftool and exiv2 will be able to read them.  You would have to create your own framework in order to do so.

Relevant xkcd

[voxleone]

I assume you mean the definition of custom user-defined tags, because you can create standard tags in a file without this.  (There has been some confusion about this in the past.)

I realize that now, after diving a little deeper into the docs. EXIF/ExifTool keep me constant company now. You see, I have little experience with XMP and ExifTool. I'm literally learning as we speak, so please bear with me.

[voxleone]

What is the type of data you want to embed?  As there are thousands of standard tags and it is likely that there are existing tags that will cover your need.  (...) In my opinion, it is rarely a good idea to make custom tags, as very few programs outside of exiftool and exiv2 will be able to read them.  You would have to create your own framework in order to do so.

Mostly strings. It's an experiment I'm doing in computer vision. My point is: annotations for image labeling are metadata [basically strings], so let's treat them as such. I want to experiment with storing annotations in the image itself, serializing the data to one, or several tags.

For the casual reader, computer vision annotations come in several text formats and text files are always paired with image files within datasets, e.g. cow0001.jpg → cow0001.json. They usually store the coordinates that allow the AI system to superimpose the "bounding boxes" – those already familiar squares that delimit the target detection items in images. Some platforms use json, others xml, and still others csv [there will definitely be other formats]. Some require the presence of the annotated text file in the same directory [same level] as the image. Other platforms require the text file to be located in its own directory within the image directory, which may [must] be called json, xml, label, and a few other requirements.

To to deal with image annotation/labeling you have to adapt to the text formats and the filesystem tree chosen for that type of format or dataset.

I'm looking for the answer to the question: is it worth all the hassle if you have a small dataset – perhaps proprietary, with a couple of thousand images, mostly for fine-tuning tasks? Maybe – just maybe – not.

The fact that there are so many tags to be used – and it is not necessary or even recommended to define/create new instances – makes my work simpler. That's good.

The fact that there are not many applications that offer tag creation functionality [which now I know is not that necessary] would not be a big problem for me – and it becomes an opportunity, widens the scope for ET use cases.

I will propose this discussion next week [or maybe I have just done so], in a dedicated thread, with more details and support.

Thank you for the warm welcome. I'm very impressed with the software and site and the pace of the activity. One of the best places on the Web, fulfilling the original promise of the Internet. Kudos and keep up the great work.