Re: [Gimp-user] Any way to disable GIMP from touching EXIF data?

[Jeffery Small <jefferysmall gmail com>]

On 01-22, Liam R E Quin wrote:
> On Wed, 2021-01-20 at 09:48 -0800, Jeffery Small wrote:
> > Using GIMP 2.10.22 on Xubuntu 20.04
> >
> > There has been zero response to the bug report so,
> > at this point, I do not expect anything to be done in
> > the foreseeable future.
>
> Generally bugs need a volunteer to work on fixing the code.
> GIMP must at te very least read the metadata into memory and write it
> out again afterwards. You could use "exiftool" to copy metadata from
> the original to the edited image instead of GIMP, for now.

Thanks for the reply.  I understand that GIMP needs volunteers to fix
bugs.  However, this one is so pernicious that I'm surprised that
whoever originally added the EXIF support (if they are still around)
hasn't jumped on this.

Thanks for the suggestion regarding exiftool.  I use it daily and have
written many tools to automate its use.  The only problem with your
suggestion is that, when working with JPG images, there often isn't
an "original" such as a RAW file to work from.  I already do most of
my in-place editing (adjusting contrast, sharpness, cropping, etc.)
prior to adding EXIF comments, but occasionally I return to an
existing image to make an additional tweak (for example, if it was
cropped wrong after a rotation and a corner is showing) and when
saved, the EXIF comments are silently obliterated.  I could make
sidecar EXIF files for the images to be edited and restore from that
(I already wrote a utility to do this) but it's a PITA and you have to
remember to do it before editing.

There is nothing wrong with GIMP reading and writing out the EXIF
data so long as it isn't destructive.  Unfortunately , it is!

Regards,
-- 
Jeff