Re: critical missing feature: embedding tags in EXIF/IPTC

[Piergi <pt traversin org>]

Mike Gemünde-2 wrote:
> 
> Am Samstag, den 28.08.2010, 18:59 -0700 schrieb Piergi:
>> Myself I use a different approach: I do tagging and commenting with
>> geeqie
>> ($ sudo aptitude install geeqie), then I add copyright and stuff with
>> exiperson (http://exiflow.sourceforge.net)--a perl script that uses
>> exiftool--and after that I import everything in f-spot.
> 
> Interesting. I'm currently working on a GUI (for f-spot) for editing
> some basic metadata of images. This includes e.g. the Author/Creator,
> Title, Comment (, Copyright?). I'm also thinking about to have some
> presets for different persons. So it would be nice, if you can explain
> your use case of setting metadata to me.
> 

This sounds very similar to the Digikam interface: please please make it
less cumbersome and less mouse-only! :D

Here goes my experience: I've always used f-spot, but when I tried DigiKam
I've noticed a whole lot of possibilities inhandling metadata, notably the
introduction of author, copyright and such.

Unfortunately, I stumbled upon two problems.

1: doing the tagging in Digikam is *crazy*: you have to put tags one by one,
drag-dropping the tag, no auto-completion and very confusing and cluttered
interface (keep in mind I am using an Eeepc, so size does matter for me).
Other than that, Digikam when «writing all metadata to images» does OK, but
when «updating metadata» it just *erase* all other tags except the updated
ones. This is obviously a show-stopper.

2: somehow the XMP from f-spot was producing an error (XMP error 102), but
not all of the times, and I have not been able to reproduce that. Sometimes
I get the error, sometimes I don't. The details in this other thread:
http://old.nabble.com/XMP-Toolkit-error-102-td29049391.html

So I am now doing it my own way. Mostly command-line.
Here is the workflow.

A. I download the photos in a folder and then I run exirename on it
(http://exiflow.sourceforge.net) renaming the photos with their holy scheme
:)

B. I add author and copyright with exiperson (also exiflow), there is a
configuration file that adds the data based on the camera model. I could do
the same with exiftool, but it is just easier this way. Actually I just have
one camera, but often I download photos from people I meet during my trip,
and I think it is correct to put their name embedded in the photo, because I
am publishing those photos on a website.

C. I do the tagging with geeqie, because it writes «the right way», meaning
that I don't get the «error 102», plus it has this magic feature where you
can assign a number (1 to 6) to a tag, and then you go through the photos
attaching one or more numbers to it and they get automagically tagged.
*Very* fast way of tagging a bunch of photos (hint! hint!) [1]

D. At the same time I put comment (description?) with geeqie, that when
uploaded to the web it will appear as caption in my galleries, very handy.
[2]

E. I do photo editing (GIMP) and then I copy the metadata from the original
with exiftool ($ exiftool -overwrite_original -tagsfromfile
20100827-c102535-pt000.jpg -all:all 20100827-c102535-pt100.jpg), making sure
it copies *all* the metadata to *all* the fields (the «-all:all» flag, since
they have a bizarre priority EXIF->IPTC->XMP, check the man page).

F. I move the photos into ~/Photos/2010 and I import the folder in f-spot,
with «don't copy to photos folder» and «detect duplicates», then I do
«exiflow merge revisions». I am using the 0.6.1.5, because the other 0.6s
are crashing like crazy, and the 0.7s lack the exiflow extension and the
metadata panel, so I can't check my tags are actually there after the
import.

I hope I did not forget anything.

[1] Actually I've read of somebody doing that with the f-spot rating thing:
he rates 1 to 5, then selects, say, the 4 and adds a same tag to those
photos, then removes the rating and so on.

[2] The «description» and the «title» written with geeqie do not appear in
the «comment» in f-spot. What field are you guys exactly using?

I will put my wish-list in a next message :)
Thanks for the good job!
Piergi
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