Cmd Line Help needed

[lwarner]

I just downloaded ExifTool and the ExifTool GUI.  Then I discover the GUI isn't supported and has not been for a few years.

I have hundreds of digital (JPEG) files that have genealogical quality descriptions which I entered into the EXIF data field named comments when viewed in Windows File Explorer.  I have recently learned that the EXIF formatted information may be going away and the best place to place labels/comments attached to a photo is in the IPTC data.  I would like to find a programmatic way to copy the information I have in the EXIF comment field into an appropriate field in the IPTC data structure.

I know how to enter command lines but not which commands to use.

ExifTool appears to be powerful enough to do this but I am not.  Would someone please lead me to the solution?  Any assistance is appreciated.

Regards,
Larry

[StarGeek]

I just downloaded ExifTool and the ExifTool GUI.  Then I discover the GUI isn't supported and has not been for a few years.

While no longer supported, I believe it still works.  You should try it out to see if it does what you want.

I have hundreds of digital (JPEG) files that have genealogical quality descriptions which I entered into the EXIF data field named comments when viewed in Windows File Explorer.

I believe Windows writes that info to the XPComment tag.

I have recently learned that the EXIF formatted information may be going away and the best place to place labels/comments attached to a photo is in the IPTC data.  I would like to find a programmatic way to copy the information I have in the EXIF comment field into an appropriate field in the IPTC data structure.

I would think that the best place in IPTC block to copy that to would be the Caption-Abstract tag.  But you might want to think about migrating to the XMP:Description tag as well.  XMP is more modern. 

This is the command I would suggest:
Exiftool "-Description<XPComment" "-Caption-abstract<XPComment" FILE/DIR

That should copy your data to both the XMP:Description and IPTC:Caption-Abstract.  I suggest making copies of a few files and testing it out to see if that does what you want.

You might also want to look into a program to manage your images.  Wikipedia has a list you can use as a starting point.