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JPG-EXIF for Image Description, Rights, Creator, UserComment in Polish

Started by charvista, May 06, 2012, 08:05:50 PM

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charvista

Hello,
I was unable to read/write a word with Polish accents (ą ę ł ń ś ć ż ź ó) in the ImageDescription, Rights, Creator, Rights in Jpeg image files.
I tried:
exiftool -charset Latin2 -Description="miłość" "myimage.jpg"
I am looking the output in ACDSee Pro 3. The output is:
milosc
It is missing the accents.
What am I doing wrong?
I would like to use pure Unicode (not UTF-8) if possible.
Thanks.

Phil Harvey

The EXIF:ImageDescription tag supports only ASCII according to the EXIF specification.  Use XMP:Description instead if you want special characters.

XMP:Rights and XMP:Creator also support special characters, as do all XMP tags.

Read FAQ number 10 for a description of how to character sets are handled by ExifTool.

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).

charvista

Thank you for your reply, Phil.

I am not sure what is XMP, is that another set of meta-data, such as EXIF and IPTC?

I find it very strange that ExifTool cannot use the Polish characters, as ACDSee can store them in the file, when I enter them in ACDSee. After rebooting the computer, the Polish characters are still there, so I believe the problem is at the ExifTool level.
I have attached an image, on which I am testing it your software. In ACDSee, I see "miłość" everywhere, they were inputted from inside ACDSee.
If I need to use XMP with ExifTool, then I need an example. What command shall I use to retrieve it from the attached file?

Thank you and best regards
Charvista

Phil Harvey

Hi Charvista ,

I don't know why ACDSee shows Polish characters, because all of the "milosc" tags are encoded in standard ASCII.  There are no special characters.

ExifTool has the ability to read/write special characters to all metadata types.

Attached is the same file with the values written properly as "miłość".

Here is an argument file (let's call it "test.args"):

-IFD0:ImageDescription=miłość
-IFD0:Artist=miłość
-IFD0:Copyright=miłość
-ExifIFD:UserComment=miłość
-XMP-dc:Creator=miłość
-XMP-dc:Rights=miłość
-XMP-dc:Description=miłość
-XMP-exif:UserComment=miłość
-IPTC:By-line=miłość
-IPTC:CopyrightNotice=miłość
-IPTC:Caption-Abstract=miłość
-IPTC:CodedCharacterSet=UTF8


that you can use to write these values with this command:

exiftool -@ test.args -o fbp-fixed.jpg fbp.jpg

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).

pb

I looked at the original image in ACDSee Pro 5.2, and none of the "milosc"s in either EXIF or IPTC were accented.

Looking at the 'fixed' image with ACDSee Pro 5.2:

1.  No XMP metadata is shown, because I don't believe ACDSee deals with XMP.
2.  The EXIF field "User comment" shows milosc with the proper accents.
3.  The other exif fields (Image description, artist, copyright) are shown with a different character decoding than the desired one (and therefore look like garbage for the accented character, but consistent garbage).  My guess is that is either an ACDSee bug (not surprising), or it might have to do with OS locale.
4.  The IPTC fields by-line, Caption-Abstract and CodedCharacterSet are not shown by ACDSee.
5.  The IPTC field CopyrightNotice is shown by ACDSee as unaccented.

These are probably all shortcomings with ACDSee.  But, at least the User Comment field works.

BTW, one reason ACDSee might appear to work right for the original poster is that it maintains its own database which includes some metadata.

--peter

BogdanH

Hi,

Many software use PC local Ansi charset for writing characters into Exif. As far I know, ACDSee does that (and GUI before v5 did that).

You can do that with (from console or via ExifTool direct):
exiftool -L -Exif:Artist=miłość test.jpg
and readout properly in GUI by using ExifTool direct (result in Log window):
exiftool -L Exif:Artist test.jpg
-however, you won't get the same result if this command is executed in console.

Bogdan

Phil Harvey

Peter, thanks for the analysis.  I agree with your conclusions.

FWIW, ACDSee is second only to Picasa in my top 10 list of applications that don't handle metadata properly.

- Phil
...where DIR is the name of a directory/folder containing the images.  On Mac/Linux/PowerShell, use single quotes (') instead of double quotes (") around arguments containing a dollar sign ($).