Beginner's tutorial?

[terrypin]

I'm a novice and struggling. I'd classify myself as accurately described by this extract from a long post by dhackney in the thread 'Re: ExifTool for Dummies', July 14, 2011.
https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php/topic,3063.msg15452.html?PHPSESSID=18e5d19c6i3di5okodpeot9kk4#msg15452

--- Start paste ---
"The thing to keep in mind is that the majority of support needs come from people who are struggling to *initially* understand and implement the product, usually for a limited scope, specific problem. They will solve that problem and then disappear until the next time they have a problem to solve.

Most of those people currently don't understand the overall concepts and context of the tool and the command line syntax. Most of those people copy a command line out of a post and hack around on it in between spending *lots* of time searching for answers until they get it to work or give up.

Give them some conceptual understanding and context first. It will help them swim the Moat of Documentation."
--- End paste ---

I'm searching for a beginner's tutorial to get me over the initial hudles. Can anyone recommend one please?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Terry,

That "ExifTool for Dummies" thread was about the command-line application.

For the Windows ExifToolGUI basics, see the ExifToolGUI manual for the basics.

- Phil

[terrypin]

Hi Phil,

Thanks for again getting back to me quickly.

I understood that distinction. But for one thing I assumed that my chances of finding a beginner's tutorial might be better for ExifTool than for ExifTool GUI? And I also assumed I'd be sensible to get a grounding in the former, even though I will probably use the latter.

Anyway, so far the 'manual' doesn't cut it for me! What I need is a beginner's tutorial, distinguished by initially very simple worked examples, explained without assuming much know-how. This was apparently being discussed back in that thread two years ago:
"Although there is extensive documentation and a rich library of forum posts regarding ExifTool and its capabilities, there is currently not a lot of step-by-step tutorial information available. This is a gap that the ExifTool community is working to fill, and hopefully there will be a library of tutorials available soon."
So I'd hoped there was now one you could recommend? Ideally for the GUI, of course, if it covers all the basics, but I'd be happy with one for the Command version.

I'm never going to use more than a tiny fraction of ExifTool's functions. But so far the penny hasn't dropped on how to tackle the things I have immediately in mind. Specific examples? How to get metadata into a specific folder of JPGs, how to make Artist 'Me' for all my photos, how to copy metadata from one of a series of photos into a panorama stitched from them, how to delete Comments safely across folders and subfolders without deleting EXIF data, and so on.

And I have to admit that patience isn't one of my strengths! 

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Terry,

How to get metadata into a specific folder of JPGs, how to make Artist 'Me' for all my photos

This is probably easiest done in the GUI, but I can't give you a step-by-step on this because I can't run the GUI to figure out how to do this (I'm on a Mac).

But from the command line:

1) install ExifTool for command line use

2) run "cmd.exe" by selecting "Run..." from the Start menu in Windows



3) Type this (exactly) into the command window:

exiftool -artist="Me"

then a single SPACE, but do not press RETURN yet.

4) Drag and drop the folder onto the cmd.exe window.

5) Select the cmd.exe window and press RETURN.

Voila!  All the files in the folder have an artist of "Me".

how to copy metadata from one of a series of photos into a panorama stitched from them,

The steps are similar to above, except the command would look like this:

exiftool -tagsfromfile SRCFILE DSTFILE

where SRCFILE represents the source image, and DSTFILE represents the destination panorama.  You can drop these onto the window as in the example above instead of typing the file names if you wish.

how to delete Comments safely across folders and subfolders without deleting EXIF data

Similar to the steps above, except the command is:

exiftool -comment= FOLDER

where FOLDER is the folder name that you can type by dropping it onto the window.

I hope this helps.

- Phil

[terrypin]

Hi Phil,

That's what I call service, thank you!

I've only tackled the Artist = Me part (my eyes are seizing up!).

It duly added 'Me' to the Artist field in all 13 JPGs in the folder. But
1. It added 13 files with a suffix '_original'. Presumably backup, but can that be optionally avoided?
2. It didn't work on the 3 *.pspimage files.



Back on the case in the morning...

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Phil Harvey]

Right.  This is the expected behaviour because ExifTool only supports reading PSP files, not writing.  ("r" = read only in the documentation.  "r/w" = read/write)

- Phil

[terrypin]

Morning Phil,

PSP
OK, thanks, understood

Tutorial
Re my original question, I'm assuming there isn't one? Sadly, nor is there a 'Dummies Guide' listed at Amazon!

Learning and using ExifTool
I've been thinking about this overnight and this morning. As my intended uses are so narrow, I'm not going to launch into a major learning project. (The sort of effort I've made with my video editors, image editors, etc.)

Basically, I need maybe a dozen 'How to' solutions. Once I have them I can use them regularly. Although I'd far prefer to, I don't even need to fully understand fully how they're derived. I initially expected to get these via the GUI. But as I see Bogdan is no longer supporting its forum that changes things. And I have to say that a really major factor is your great responsiveness to my questions so far.

So, with your continued generous help, I'll try a sort of 'Learn by doing' approach. I'll articulate my questions as clearly as possible and post each individually over the coming hours and days.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

[Phil Harvey]

You are correct in assuming that there is no tutorial.  Writing one is actually very difficult because of the tremendous number of possible things that people want to do.  Even if I pick one simple task in ExifTool, I need to write three separate tutorials, one each for Windows, Mac and Linux, since a big hurdle for new users is just learning about how to run command-line programs on their system.

- Phil

Edit:  This was posted in the ExifTool GUI section, but I was talking about the command-line utility, so ignore these comments.  See my next post in this thread for a link to a quick tutorial for using ExifTool GUI.

[Phil Harvey]

There is a recently published article here that gives a quick tutorial on how to use ExifToolGUI.

- Phil