Adding/Tagging JPG comments...

I know, there is about a ga-zilion posts about this, and like a zilion programmes that claim they do the trick... But nothing really makes much sence to me...

Can anyone explain to me why it is so goddam complicated????

All I want is to add a comment to my JPGs! I want it stored in some sort of meta-data, since I want it to stay with the file when I email it around, and I want it to be easy the view this info ... anytime, anywhere...

...don't care if it is EXIF, IPTC, Jpg header, meta-man-crazy-stuff, whatever, as long as it WORKS!!!!

hlp REALLY REALLY Appreciated

PS: (think my bloodsugar is a bit funny, have been working on this for 10 hours straight!!!)

I should have been more specific:
I want to do this WITHOUT RECOMPRESSING my jpgs. If you use photoshop/aperture or any other image-programme, you can edit the meta-data - yes - but you will need to save the whole image file again, and thus recompres it, thus loosing quality. (so, if you edit comments many times, you will gradually ruin your images)

I am looking for at way to edit the metadata, without touching the original image....

to summarize some of the things i have already tried:

GraphicConverter (freeware) does - but needs to recompress.

Reveal lets you edit meta-data, without touching the image - but the data does not show in any other programmes, so I dont trust it.

Spotlight comments are saved in a seperate file in the osx library, and therefore does not follow the file around

in WinXP you can simply right click, and add meta-data from there. But this data does not show in OSX... so useless.

ExifTool should do the trick, but has to run from Terminal as a command line tool - too complicated for me


How do you people "comment" in your photos?

(ps: I dont like iPhoto - i like to keep my photos old-school, sorted in folders...)

Kebabselector said:

A bit overkill just for exif editting isn't it?

I found this, no idea if it works though. Microsoft have some Pro Photo tools to download that would work, but you know what you need for that!

Click to expand...

Already tried that one - it's the "reveal"-metadata-editor. It does seem to do a pretty good job. You can edit a description-tab, that is saved within the jpg-file. But for some weird reason, when you open that file in photoshop, and go to file-info, the description-tag is empty .. ? .. Maybe it is not generic enough or something...? (although I do find it again, when I use Preview and "file-info")

Maybe I am naive, still thinking there must be a simple way to do this !

True. If I worry about quality why use JPG at all?:

The thing is; I have 2-3000 jpg's on my computer, which I want to tag and organize. About 3 years ago - when I was using PC - I had all my photos organized and tagged using some PC software - cannot remember which, but it worked ok.
Then I changed to Mac, and guess what! It was imposibble to get my tags along. Well, I started tagging everything all over using Iphoto. Took forever, but again - worked just fine. UNTIL I had a harddisk-failure about a year ago! I had to get a new HDD and install everything again - Fortunately I had all my photos backed-up on an external drive. BUT GUESS WHAT! Again all my tags was lost!!

Now, I am gonna start tagging my photos AGAIN. But I am NOT tagging thousands of photos once again, without being absolutely sure that this information stays with the JPG forever!

So; I am looking for something fast, easy and reliable to edit the metadata contained in a JPG. But for some reason that is not that simple.

Am I really the only one on this forum, that wants to tag my jpg's ??

My PAIN is over, I finally found a solution.

Now, first, I will describe my journey of horror, so that everyone else in this situation will know what to do.

First of all, PHOTOSHOP, APERTURE & a bunch of other image-editing apps CAN DO THIS, BUT... dont use them! In order to edit your exif, iptc-metadate, you will need to resave the image-data, and thus recompress the jpg, and therefore LOOSE QUALITY. Sure, it may not be visible at first, but maybe you add a new keyword the week after, and sometime later again - EVENTUALLY you will F*** UP all your images.

Secondly - it simply takes AGES doing it this way anyhow, so why bother.

What I was looking for was an APP that in a fast and easy way would let me edit METADATA (and NOT IMAGE-data) in my JPGs, tag them with all kinds of info, and the save the meta-data WITHIN the jpg, so when you copy it around, email or whatever, this data comes along.

Iphoto and most other "digital album"-apps let you add all the infomation you want, but it is not saved within the file itself, it is saved in a seperate data-base-file, some obscure place on your harddisk. So if your system crashes (like it happened to me) copying your backup-files WONT HELP a bit - since the data-base-file is lost.

BUT, AS I SAID, THE SEARCH IS OVER

Apperently it is not very well-known, but used by most pro's (photojournalist). The app is PHOTO MECHANIC. It does exactly what it described. It lets you edit METADATA in a very fast and easy manner. It does in NO WAY edit the image-data itself, so you dont have to worry about quality-loss.

DEMO available here: http://www.camerabits.com/site/downloads.html

a little expensive, but I definitely recommend this!!

To answer some of the above questions:

yes - PNG is a great format for images. Lossless, great! Although sizing at about 10 times a JPG, converting your whole library is gonna take up alot of space. I personally see no reason for that, since most my images where shot JPG. I don't loose quality keeping them as JPG! When I start editing certain images (far from all!) I usually keep the original untouched, and save my edited version as TIFF. But again; different people different preferences...

BUT; when it comes to META-data, PNG is stone-age. Apparently, there are no standards, or even exif-like pseudostandards, for embedding metadata in PNG images. So, converting your nicely tagged jpg to png - magical - your metadata is gone! (and I read somewhere that the whole metadata in png developing was abandoned in year 2000 - so no, it's not gonna be fixed next month....)

guess you just gotta find your own way through this jungle....

BarnCat said:

tiffs, by the way, are almost three times (if I am remembering my own experience in the last few days right - maybe twice) as large as pngs. So tiffs are hardly space savers, themselves.

Click to expand...

I agree - tiffs are large files as well. But as I said, It is only the few photos which I start to retouch in photoshop that I keep as Tiff (and the original as Jpg). So in my library - currenctly 6.500 Jpgs - I might have a few hundred Tiffs. You talked about converting your whole library to PNG. That is going to be a SUBSTANTIAL differecne...

Sorry cant help you - decided I am done with PC , but there does seem to be plenty of free tools for this using PC. Stumbled on something called Scotts JPEG-commenter, you might want to check that out as well...