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completely overwrite meta datas in a file with Text Edit droplet

Started by rebecca, November 14, 2014, 06:19:20 AM

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rebecca

Hello Everybody!

First I'd like to apologize if my question seems stupid, I'm really interested in computers, but I'm far to be a computer scientist. :-)

I'm a student in graphic design in Brussels, and for one of my school projects, I'd like to entirely overwrite meta datas for some image files of mine.
The idea is that I don't need any preconceived technical or date tags, I just want to be able to write all the datas myself, like in a blank text editor. (I don't now if it's even possible with Exiftool or any other software, but I thought I should ask anyway).

I installed Exiftool on my Macintosh, but I'm not so familiar with command lines, so I downloaded the Rob Lewis' droplet (the Text Edit one) to be able to freely modify the datas.

It runs a Text Edit version of the meta datas, that I've been trying to modify directly in Text Edit, but I don't know how to save the Text Edit file so the meta datas are actually saved in the image itself. Text edit would only save an .rtf file somewhere in my computer, and I don't understand how to save the datas inside the original file itself.

I figured I should maybe do something with the AppleScript editor but I don't know how to do.

How would you save the edited informations from text edit? Or is there any other way to entirely delete and replace meta datas?


Thank you very much!  :)

Rébecca

Phil Harvey

Hi Rébecca,

If you want ExifTool to read a text file it has to be in a specific format.  For example, the same format as either the -args or -csv option provides.  Going this route may not be very convenient though.  The best method really depends on exactly how you obtain the metadata for the images.  If you enter different metadata for each image, then it may be more convenient to find a GUI-based metadata editor.  But if you want to batch write the same metadata to a number of images, then ExifTool is the way to go.

- 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 ($).

rebecca

Hello Phil! Thank you for your answer.

In fact I want to write different meta datas for each image I have, but I want to write them entirely myself, and I'm afraid a GUI editor would already contain technical fields that I can't remove, and I don't need them. I'd just like to write the datas the way I could write a simple text, because in fact my project is all about writing some kind of poetry as meta datas, so I need to get rid of the technical specifications. Is there a GUI editor that could work for that, that would propose a classic text editor page? I though I could do it with Rob Lewis' droplet but it seems more complicated than I thought.

Thank you again!  :)

Rébecca

Phil Harvey

Hi Rébecca,

I'm not an expert on other software.  Perhaps someone here knows a simple OS X GUI-based metadata editor.

- 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 ($).