Matching an image tags with a database dump

[dpayeur]

Hello,

I'm using exiftool in my photo manager to extract EXIF/IPTC info. It works great so far. This thing is awesome.

One feature I would like to add is better formatting of tag values and maybe editing.
For these I need to know what type of datum is used for each tag and if it can be edited at all.

But I can't find a way to match the output of an image tag extraction with the output of a database dump.

Has someone figured out the relationship between the various infos of a "exiftool -listx" command vs. the ones provided by a command like "exiftool -G -D myfile.jpg" ?
I can't find anything deterministic enough. For example, listx has many entries for EXIF but -G -D only offers one... I tried using g0, g1 to no avail.

Is there a simple way? Or may a switch that would output the raw descriptors when extracting from an image file?

thanks
donald

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Donald,

It is more complicated than this.  The format information is stored in the EXIF, so it may be different for different files and may contradict the database format (although this isn't likely, I have certainly seen it).

But to match up these values, use the tag id of the -listx output and match this up with the TagID extracted with the -D option.

An alternative would be to use the -v2 option to get the format information directly from the source file.  This would be more reliable for the reason mentioned above.

- Phil

[dpayeur]

Thanks for your quick response, Phil.

Sorry for mine being so late, I've been away.

I looked at the -v2 output format you suggest and it does indeed show the tags' storage size and type, but then I lose the nicely formatted values of my current command line (for example '2' instead of 'Program AE' or '10/8000' instead of '1/800').

Maybe I will end up running the tool once with -G -D and then run it again with -v2 and use the "-Tag 0x.... (x bytes, type)" part of the latter and match it against the former.

There wouldn't be a switch I could add to -D -G to have the tags' storage size and type along the nicely formatted tag values, within the tabular output format, would there? :-)

Thanks again.
Donald

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Donald,

There wouldn't be a switch I could add to -D -G to have the tags' storage size and type along the nicely formatted tag values, within the tabular output format, would there? :-)

You've got a cruel sense of humour.

- Phil