Re: Auto setting of EXIF and IPCT tags

[Thomas Lunde <tlunde gmail com>]

On Apr 29, 2005, at 4:29 AM, Bengt Thuree wrote:
> I am playing with trying to get the IPTC/EXIF values of photos, and my
> intention is to integrate this into F-Spot, so that when you import
> pictures into F-Spot, a number of Tags and Categories will 
> automatically
> be created.

I am glad that you are working on this.  Do you intend to handle XMP 
metadata as well? (Although obviously the wrong language for f-spot, 
Image::ExifTool appears to handle all sorts of photographic metadata 
very well.)
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ExifTool.html

> | IPTC Values
> | -Persons-
> | [Iptc Makernote] Keywords - Jasmine Jade

Are you assuming that all keywords are for people?  Many IPTC keywords 
are used to describe other objects in a photo, or also keyword 
information about the event at which they are taken.

Will your implementation care if there are space characters with a 
keyword?  (I wouldn't think to ask, as it is allowed by the spec, 
except that Picasa cannot handle this.)


> | [Iptc Makernote] Unknown tag (0x025C) - Farfars apartment	- Location

I'm concerned about the "Unknown tag" status of "Location".  I've seen 
Location listed as a potential IPTC classification in some programs 
(e.g. iView Media Pro), but not in others (e.g. GraphicConverter).  It 
is a handy thing to be able to specify, but if it is non-standard this 
could cause interoperability problems.

> I will also try to come up with a rudimentary IPTC field viewer.

Great!  Do you plan to allow IPTC tag editing directly, or perhaps 
allow exporting of the f-spot tag info back into the appropriate IPTC 
tags?

> Does anyone have any comments on this?

Please don't mistake my questions for criticism; IPTC is the most 
widely deployed user-editable photographic metadata standard and I 
think that it is great that f-spot will be able to take advantage of 
it.

thomas