2

I have 50,000-plus JPG files which I've tagged for easy lookup by user-selected keywords. The database which matches image files with their keywords is proprietary and utility-specific. I want to switch to embedding keywords in each image's IPTC keyword metadata field so that I'm not dependent on any one utility and its database. I can manipulate my current database to yield a CSV or TXT file containing each image's pathname and the keywords assigned to each image. Is there a utility which can batch write multiple IPTC keywords to image files across multiple folders, using a CSV or TXT file as input? IrfanView and Zoner Photo Studio can batch write IPTC keywords, but only in one folder at a time, and neither appears to accept CSV or TXT file input. I'm dealing with several hundred folders and a couple dozen keywords. Photo Mechanic might be able to do it but I'm running Windows XP, and Photo Mechanic for Win XP is no longer available.

Thanks in advance!

1 Answer 1

0

I don't profess to know the exact answer, but I might be able to point you in the right direction. The command-line utility exiftool (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/) may well be able to do what you want.

See https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/16305/how-can-i-batch-add-keywords-metadata-to-jpgs-with-matching

In my case I just wanted to find an easier way to caption about 1,500 photos from an overseas trip, using the flexibility of a word processor instead of having to do it one by one in a program like Geosetter.

After renaming the photos, I generated a tab-delimited list of the file names with a blank Description field using this batch file:

==========

rem Dropping a folder on the following .BAT file will create "captions.txt" in the folder:

rem Note that there is a TAB character in the next line between "SourceFile" and "Description"

echo "SourceFile Description" > %1\captions.txt

C:\exiftool\exiftool -T -filename -description -ext jpg %1 >> %1\captions.txt

==========

Then I opened captions.txt in Word (landscape format works best), set a tab stop/hanging indent for easier readability, and typed the captions as required.

I then loaded the resulting file into Excel, saved as a CSV, then used this batch command to write the captions to the files:

==========

C:\exiftool\exiftool -csv=captions.csv -ext jpg .

pause

==========

1
  • Thank you, @Frank, I will look into exiftool and see if it will do what I need. Jun 3, 2016 at 5:35

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .