Comments on: Using Perl and ExifTool to Access EXIF Data in Digital Images

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 20:30:12 +0000

Phil,

This is cool stuff, I have gotten more free information from you than what I have paid for. – Where do I send the check?

There are times where I need to rename large batches of images by elapsed time; is there a simple way to calculate the elapsed time, write that time to EXIF and rename the files accordingly. For example, a 5000 meter race starts at 7:00 AM, the person’s picture is taken at 7:22:13 AM crossing the finish line; I would like to rename the file to be 22:13, which would correspond to the person’s finishing time. – Thanks in advance.

By: Allan

Allan — Mon, 24 Jan 2011 17:48:21 +0000

Hi, I just implemented. After a bit of testing I dropped the second arg to WriteInfo because I supply filenames after writing the file, and it works so I’m not keeping backups of backups!

[code]
my $exifTool = new Image::ExifTool;
my $set_val = $exifTool->SetNewValuesFromFile($source_file);
if( exists $set_val->{'Error'} )
{
die "Error in SetNewValuesFromFile from $source_file: ". $set_val->{'Error'};
}
print "Writing Exif data to $target_file\n";
$exifTool->WriteInfo($target_file)
or die "Error writing $target_file: ".$exifTool->GetValue('Error')."\n";

[/code]

By: Allan

Allan — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 23:33:34 +0000

Thanks for this. I also resize my images using perl, and lose the exif data in the process. So the 2-liner to copy the exif data is just the ticket. I take it that imagewidth and imageheight aren’t copied to the resized image file !?
Cheers, al.

By: warper

warper — Tue, 28 Dec 2010 16:38:32 +0000

Hi Spencer,
thanks for this post, it has been really useful to develop my own workflows for photography, I’ll share my results.

In the end I just copy some of the field from the RAW file that are useful for flickr and f-spot

By: Jean P

Jean P — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:00:59 +0000

Very good example. Thanks
Please note that the terminating n” in each print statements of the “Simple example” script should be preceded by a backslash (for newline)

By: Marshalleq

Marshalleq — Sat, 08 May 2010 06:29:32 +0000

This is really cool! Any idea how to extract all the info from a RAW file and put it into an existing jpg file. I’m currently using the simple “exiftool -tagsFromFile _MG_1434.CR2 _MG_1434.jpg” for testing, but it doesn’t seem to include all the data. The next (more important step is applying that so that it adds to any existing file with the same name (but ending in jpg) and then running your script above to organise by date.

Yeah, I know, but UFRAW won’t export EXIF to anything but 8 bit, and I gotta save that first THEN edit in gimp which is a little too lossy for my liking.

By: Roland Pullen

Roland Pullen — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:21:45 +0000

Your article is very much appreciated. Just what I have been looking for. Thanks

By: Spencer

Spencer — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:04:49 +0000

Hi Phil,

Thanks so much for your comment! I edited the article to include your (much better) command-line alternative.

By: Phil Harvey

Phil Harvey — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:49:40 +0000

Good article, thanks. Just one quick tip…

Your command-line alternative for renaming images can be reduced to this single command:

exiftool -d %Y%m%d-%H%M%S-%%.2c.%%e “-FileName