Adding picasa tags to files

[simonmcnair]

This must have been covered before, but I've been googling and chatgpt'ing and pythoning to no avail.

I still use Picasa.  Yeah, I know.  I have a folder called motorbike, and a folder called lego that have folders, subfolders etc and I want to make them heterogeneous.

Some of these have XMP already, and some do not.  But I want to add a picasa compatible tag to all the files, creating the xml xmp if required, as it goes along.  I am not completely sure what PIcasa uses, if it's Keywords, XMP:Subject or -IPTC:Keywords, but none of them seem to work.

I've tried pillow, xmp-tool and all kinds of things, but I've got to the point where I don't think there is a good library in Python to do, that works on windows, it that I'm clever enough to understand.

If anyone can shed some light on it I'd appreciate it.  If it shows the tags in windows explorer's tags, that would be even better.

Cheers
Simon

[StarGeek]

According to my notes, Picasa will read either IPTC:Keywords and/or XMP:Subject to fill the "Tags" property.  But IIRC, Picasa will not re-read the file to read any changes made outside of it.  You have to move the files to a directory that Picasa is not reading, wait a moment (or maybe even close/reopen Picasa), and then move it back in.

Windows will also read these tags.  See this post for what tags Windows will read/write to fill the Property->Details.

A couple more things to take note of with Picasa.  First, when reading Keywords/Subject, if the keyword has a comma in it, the comma is treated as a separator.  For example, a keyword of "Smith, John" is treated as two keywords, "Smith" and "John".

Second, Picasa will alter/erase the MakerNotes for Sony, Pentax, Nikon, Minolta, and Casio cameras.  There maybe others as well.  I think Canon was the only camera in which Picasa didn't remove the Makernotes, though I haven't checked in a long time and it may be different for newer camera models.

[simonmcnair]

According to my notes, Picasa will read either IPTC:Keywords and/or XMP:Subject to fill the "Tags" property.  But IIRC, Picasa will not re-read the file to read any changes made outside of it.  You have to move the files to a directory that Picasa is not reading, wait a moment (or maybe even close/reopen Picasa), and then move it back in.

Windows will also read these tags.  See this post for what tags Windows will read/write to fill the Property->Details.

A couple more things to take note of with Picasa.  First, when reading Keywords/Subject, if the keyword has a comma in it, the comma is treated as a separator.  For example, a keyword of "Smith, John" is treated as two keywords, "Smith" and "John".

Second, Picasa will alter/erase the MakerNotes for Sony, Pentax, Nikon, Minolta, and Casio cameras.  There maybe others as well.  I think Canon was the only camera in which Picasa didn't remove the Makernotes, though I haven't checked in a long time and it may be different for newer camera models.

I'm really grateful that you took the time, and effort, to reply to my post with such consideration.  Thank you.