How to add an EXIF header?
Kelvin Lim
I'm currently in the midst of sorting out my old digital photos, but ran
into a little hitch. Basically, I have a whole bunch of photos taken
back in 1999 that I had edited at the time with an image editor that did
not support EXIF headers--and thus all the EXIF data for these photos
were lost. (Hey, I hadn't even _heard_ of EXIF back then.... :/ )
Now, I'm not particularly concerned about losing my exposure settings,
since I was still new to photography then and took most of my photos in
point 'n' shoot auto mode anyway, but I would really like to be able to
re-insert date/time stamps into these files. The reason for this is
that I intend to implement a system whereby my photos will all be sorted
by the date/time in their EXIF headers, thus these files with no EXIF
data really mess things up.
I can come up with fairly reasonable estimates for the dates for most of
these photos, so it will not be a problem inputting the data manually.
The only thing I lack is a software tool that allows me to add an EXIF
header with date/time stamp info! As such, if anyone here can point me
to a suitable program that can do this (very preferably without
modifying the JPEG image data itself to avoid image re-compression), I
will be most grateful indeed.
Thanks in advance! :)
kelvin lim
Terry Orchard
Exifer lets you edit the date time and the user comment. Windows,
freeware, from http://www.friedemann-schmidt.com/software/exifer/.
ExifUtils lets you edit almost all exif fields. It's a set of command
line tools. Windows, shareware, $15 US,
http://users.bigpond.net.au/thomas/exif.html.
Terry
Kelvin Lim
news:<kk1tjuc7sl4e3atqm...@4ax.com>...
> Exifer lets you edit the date time and the user comment. Windows,
> freeware, from http://www.friedemann-schmidt.com/software/exifer/.
Hi Terry, thanks for the tip. Exifer sounds like it will do exactly
what I need. I will check out the link you provided. Really appreciate
your help!
kelvin lim
Kelvin Lim
news:<kk1tjuc7sl4e3atqm...@4ax.com>...
> Exifer lets you edit the date time and the user comment. Windows,
> freeware, from http://www.friedemann-schmidt.com/software/exifer/.
I downloaded the latest version of Exifer from the web site listed
above. However, while using this program to update my photos' EXIF
date/time stamps, I noticed one strange quirk: Exifer appears to be
unable to read the EXIF data from all photos that had been previously
edited and re-saved with Adobe Photoshop 7. Is this a known bug (or
"feature"), or is there something I'm doing wrong?
kelvin lim
Terry Orchard
>I noticed one strange quirk: Exifer appears to be
>unable to read the EXIF data from all photos that had been previously
>edited and re-saved with Adobe Photoshop 7. Is this a known bug (or
>"feature"), or is there something I'm doing wrong?
Sorry, I don't use photoshop, so can't help with this. Perhaps someone
else can chime in here? Or email the author?
Terry
Michael Meissner
The jhead program can set the EXIF date information. Here is the help
information for jhead 1.8:
Program for extracting Digicam setting information from Exif Jpeg headers
used by most Digital Cameras. v1.8 Matthias Wandel, Jul 7 2002.
http://www.sentex.net/~mwandel/jhead mwa...@sentex.net
Usage: ./jhead [options] files
Where:
[otpions] are:
-dc --> Delete comment field (as left by progs like Photoshop & Compupic)
-ce --> Edit comment field. Uses environment variable 'editor' to
determine which editor to use. If editor not set, uses VI
under Unix and notepad with windows
-de --> Strip Exif section (smaller jpeg file, but loose digicam info)
-st <name> Save Exif thumbnail, if there is one, in file <name>
If output file name contains the substring "&i" then the
image file name is subsitute for the &i. Note that quotes around
the argument are required for the '&' to be passed to the program.
An output name of '-' causes thumbnail to be written to stdout
-te <name> Transfer exif header from another image file <name>
Uses same name mangling as '-st' option
-dt --> Remove exif integral thumbnails and other non camera setting
parts of exif header. Typically trims 10k
-h --> help (this text)
-v --> even more verbose output
-se --> Supress error messages relating to corrupt exif header structure
-c --> concise output
-model model
--> Only process files from digicam containing model substring in
camera model description
-exonly Skip all files that don't have an exif header (skip all jpegs that
were not created by digicam)
-ft --> Set file modification time to Exif time.
-n[format-string]
--> Rename files according to date. If the optional format-string is
not supplied, the format is mmdd-hhmmss. If a format-string is
given, it is passed to the 'strftime' function for formatting
This feature is useful for ordering files from multipe digicams to
sequence of taking. Only renames files whose names are mostly
numerical (as assigned by digicam)
The '.jpg' is automatically added to the end of the name. If the
destination name already exists, a letter or digit is added to
the end of the name to make it uniqe.
-nf[format-string]
--> Same as -n, but rename regardless of original name
-ta<+|->h[:mm]
--> Adjust time by h:mm backwards of forwards. Useful when having
taken pictures with the wrong time set on the camera, such as when
travelling across time zones or DST changes.
-ts<time> Set the Exif internal time to <time>. <time> is in the format
yyyy:mm:dd-hh:mm:ss
-cmd command
--> Apply 'command' to every file, then re-insert exif and command
sections into the image. &i will be substituted for the input file
name, and &o (if &o is used). Use quotes around the command string
This is most useful in conjunction with the free ImageMagic tool.
For example, with My Cannon S100, which suboptimally compresses
jpegs I can specify
jhead -cmd "mogrify -quality 80 &i" *.jpg
to re-compress a lot of images using ImageMagic to half the size,
and no visible loss of quality while keeping the exif header
Another invocation I like to use is jpegtran (hard to find for
windows). I type:
jhead -cmd "jpegtran -progressive &i &o" *.jpg
to convert jpegs to progressive jpegs (Unix jpegtran syntax
differs slightly)
files --> path/filenames with or without wildcards
--
Michael Meissner
PMB 198, 174 Littleton Road #3, Westford, MA 01886
email: meis...@the-meissners.org, fax: +1 978-692-4482
http://www.the-meissners.org
CM
news:000301c23308$d0a78670$0300a8c0@Armenelos:
I'm using Exifer 1.0.20 beta (which is, as far as I know, the current
release) and I have no problems reading metadata from images that have been
edited with Photoshop 7.
Do you have ACDsee v4.0? There's mention of a bug in it on the Exifer web
site. This bug corrupts metadata.
--
CM
Kelvin Lim
>As such, if anyone here can point me to a suitable
>program that can do this (very preferably without
>modifying the JPEG image data itself to avoid
>image re-compression), I will be most grateful indeed.
Many thanks to everyone who helped me on this thread. I managed to
achieve what I wanted to do using both Exifer and Jhead. Very nifty
little programs indeed. Not sure why Exifer chokes on Photoshop 7 JPEG
images on my computer, but Jhead did the job for those cases. Thanks
again to everyone. :)
kelvin lim
Serial # 19781010
changes the firmware field to Photoshop 7 and sometimes changes other
fields too. Photoshop 6 just left the data alone. I tried editing
the files with a hex editor to see if I could change the fields, but
that just corrupted the files. I'm always on the lookout for EXIF
tools that can change fields. - pk
On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 14:46:01 GMT, Terry Orchard <no@email_invalid.com>
wrote:
Chris Cox
19781010 <m...@nowhere.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I've found that Photoshop 7 corrupts my EXIF data too. It
> changes the firmware field to Photoshop 7 and sometimes changes other
> fields too.
Photoshop only changes what it is supposed to change in the EXIF data.
> Photoshop 6 just left the data alone.
Which was incorrect and led to many problems.
Chris
D R
http://mediachest.sourceforge.net
On Wed, 24 Jul 2002 17:10:17 +0800, "Kelvin Lim" <kelv...@cmu.edu>
wrote: