Edit preview image tags?

[Kilrah]

I have a Sony A580 camera (BTW, SonyModelID = 283), and I'm trying to edit the camera name in an ARW file.
It's easy to edit the Model tag, but it only edits one of the 2 Model tags present (the 2nd being for the embedded preview from my understanding). How do I edit that one?

This being an attempt at fooling Lightroom my ARW is from an A55V (same sensor, so hopefully quite similar) as there isn't any support for the A580 yet... Not much hope, but as this has been reported to work with some Olympus cams you never know. Model, Software and SonyModelID don't cut it, maybe elimintating the last reference to the A580 there is might help...

EDIT: RAW sample here

[Phil Harvey]

Thanks for the information about the model ID and sample image (I'll download it later today when I'm on a faster connection).

The Model is probably stored in IFD0 and IFD1 (as seen when using -a -G1), so you can do what you want with this:

exiftool -ifd0:model=SLT-A55V -ifd1:model=SLT-A55V -sonymodelid=SLT-A55V ...

But I will warn you that the Adobe software is very fragile, and breaks easily with edited ARW images (so badly for the NEX-3 that it won't even recognize the file as being from an NEX-3 after editing anything).  No other software tested has any problem like this (the Sony software setting the standard here since they obviously know how to read their own images).  I have been communicating with Adobe to help them fix this problem, but it is not yet fixed.

- Phil

[Kilrah]

Thanks, that was it indeed.

ACR is still not recognising it though, there must be more involved like you say.

EDIT: Indeed Sony software has no problem with the edited file

[Kilrah]

Lightroom 3.3RC is out, still doesn't have A580 support, BUT it seems they have fixed something in ARW handling! It WILL now take edited A580 ARWs, all that's needed is setting the sonymodelid tag to the A55v's and it works!

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Kilrah,

Yes, I have been testing the release candidate.  It is good to know that you can now load "remodelled" A580 ARW's.

They fixed two problems involved with loading edited ARW's, but it still fails (with a "Not enough memory" error) when loading an ARW which was first edited using Sony's IDC utility then edited with ExifTool. I have reported this, and hopefully it will get fixed too before the official release.

- Phil

[Kilrah]

OK, interesting.
I have just run a recursive batch on all my RAWs (about 2000 of them) and all but one load (fails with "Failed to find a place for the imported file"). It might be one I had edited with IDC...

EDIT: It was indeed, opened in IDC again, deleted the "current" version in the version panel so that only one (the "original" one) was left, and now LR imports it!

[Phil Harvey]

Adobe just released the final version of Camera Raw 6.3.  This version seems to solve all of the ARW problems.

- Phil

[Kilrah]

Adobe just released the final version of Camera Raw 6.3.  This version seems to solve all of the ARW problems.

Indeed, seems all good! My existing A580 ARWs that have been modded fortuantely also still work, would have been a pain to re-convert them all