Need help in adding EXIF data to original photos #1250

gspannu · 2023-10-10T08:34:41Z

gspannu
Oct 10, 2023

My setup:

MacBook Pro (Apple Silicon)
Photos using Referenced files (residing on same hard disk)
No iCloud files, all files are local on hard disk
Files are mainly RAW files or iPhone (HEIC) files
Installed osxphotos as binary file
Installed exiftool through homebrew

Workflow:

Import files to Photos to a specific album
keyword added
Photo editing done as required

Requirements (What I need some help for)
For all photos just added to this newly created album

Add information from macOS Photos to EXIF metadata in the original referenced files.
Write to original files, no backup files needed, no additional sidecar files to be created
Run as a two stage operation

Step 1 - First pass...
Write EXIF data to be written to original files...

Add location information to Photos EXIF data (i.e. Location, City, County, Country, CountryCode)
Add keywords to EXIF
Add specific hardcoded values to certain EXIF fields
Creator: "John Smith"
Copyright: "Copyright © John Smith"
Rights Usage: "All Rights Reserved"
Add Title to EXIF {dynamically created - should be equal to "Location, City, Country" }

Ensure that this newly written EXIF data is now read back by Photos

Step 2 - I will now manually edit the Titles in macOS Photos(if required and make it more suitable)

Step 3 - Second Pass...
Write EXIF data to be written to original files...

Caption field: {Same as Title}
Subject field: {Same as Title}
Headline field: {Same as Title}

Ensure that this newly written EXIF data is now read back by Photos

I am trying to read the documentation and understand the various command line options, but would appreciate if anyone could provide me the command line options for Step 1 and Step 3.

Thanks...

RhetTbull · 2023-10-10T13:16:24Z

RhetTbull
Oct 10, 2023
Maintainer

Hi. This is not a use case supported by osxphotos. osxphotos does have a osxphotos push-exif command that "pushes" (writes) metadata from photos to the original file in the library. This would partially work for step 1 and step 3. I say partially because this command does give some control over the metadata written it does not deal with creator, copyright, etc. You can't specify custom fields (but you can specify custom values for the supported fields). The options, available in the docs are:

all: all metadata
keywords: keywords/tags (e.g. IPTC:Keywords, etc.)
location: location information (e.g. EXIF:GPSLatitude, EXIF:GPSLongitude, etc.)
faces: face region information (e.g. XMP:RegionName, etc.)
persons: person in image information (e.g. XMP:PersonInImage, etc.)
datetime: date/time information (e.g. EXIF:DateTimeOriginal, etc.)
title: title information (e.g. XMP:Title, etc.)
description: description information (e.g. XMP:Description, etc.)

There is currently no option to read the EXIF data back into Photos (with exception of date/time/timezone which Photos can sometimes mess up -- see osxphotos timewarp which has a --pull-exif option to "pull" or read the EXIF data from the file back into Photos. Why don't you do all these EXIF edits before importing the photos to Photos? Photos will read on import keyword, title, description, location, and the normal EXIF lens/shot data.

There's also a batch-edit command that allows you to batch edit title, keywords, etc. (and has a template system to dynamically set these) but it does not support some of the fields you want to use.

If you know how to write code in python, you could create a scrip to do this exact workflow using the components provided by osxphotos. For example the ExifTool class provides a way to use exiftool to read & write metadata.

exiftool can do everything you want if you learn how to use it. Here's a way to get a list of files you just imported into a specific album for example:

osxphotos query --added-in-last "2 hours" --album "YourAlbum" --quiet --print "{photo.path}"

Obviously you change the time frame from "2 hours" to whatever makes sense for you and the album name from "YourAlbum" to the album you're working in. This prints a list of all the photo paths to the original files which can then be fed to exiftool to write additional fields. Keep in mind that this is the path to the original referenced photo. When Photos edits a photo, it keeps the edited version in a different path inside the library, not with the original referenced image.

It sounds like you're trying to use Photos as a digital asset management tool it isn't designed to be. You might be better off with Lightroom or DigiKam, etc.

For reference, these are the EXIF/IPTC/XMP fields that osxphotos writes to which as you can see does not include all the fields you want:

        IPTC:CaptionAbstract
        XMP:Title
        IPTC:ObjectName
        XMP:TagsList
        IPTC:Keywords (may include album name, person name, or template)
        XMP:Subject (set to keywords + person)
        XMP:PersonInImage
        EXIF:GPSLatitudeRef, EXIF:GPSLongitudeRef
        EXIF:GPSLatitude, EXIF:GPSLongitude
        EXIF:GPSPosition
        EXIF:DateTimeOriginal
        EXIF:OffsetTimeOriginal
        EXIF:ModifyDate
        IPTC:DigitalCreationDate
        IPTC:DateCreated
        QuickTime:CreationDate
        QuickTime:CreateDate (UTC)
        QuickTime:ModifyDate (UTC)
        QuickTime:GPSCoordinates
        UserData:GPSCoordinates

2 replies

RhetTbull Oct 10, 2023
Maintainer

By the way, there is an open issue (see #243) to add an --exiftool-template option to the push-exif and export commands which would allow you to specify arbitrary metadata fields to write to the file (With templated values). This could probably solve your use case once implemented. Not sure when I'll get to implementing this.

oPromessa Sep 8, 2024

Hey @RhetTbull. Just to be documented.

EXIF:DateTimeOriginal (for Photos) and QuickTime:CreationDate (for Videos):

Normally:

Photos: JPEG/HEIC have EXIF:DateTimeOriginal (and sometimes EXIF:OffsetTimeOriginal)
Videos: MOV/MP4 have QuickTime:CreationDate
- and inclusively you're not able to write EXIF:DateTimeOriginal into Videos.
But I found/have some Canon MOV files (Canon PowerShot SX40 HS) named MVI_NNNN.MOV which:
- have both EXIF:DateTimeOriginal and QuickTime:CreationDate!!!
- but no EXIF:OffsetTimeOriginal

osxphotos push-exif and timewarp -c

As you mentioned above (and the code below), priority is given to EXIF:DateTimeOriginal will cause osxphotos timewarp -c to indicate wrong TZ/UTC status between Photos/File EXIF data. Even though osxphotos push-exif datetime does the push correctly ;)

osxphotos/osxphotos/exifutils.py

Lines 55 to 76 in 50e22ea

    
           time_fields = [ 
        
               "Composite:DateTimeCreated", 
        
               "Composite:SubSecDateTimeOriginal", 
        
               "Composite:SubSecCreateDate", 
        
               "EXIF:DateTimeOriginal", 
        
               "EXIF:CreateDate", 
        
               "QuickTime:ContentCreateDate", 
        
               "QuickTime:CreationDate", 
        
               "QuickTime:CreateDate", 
        
               "IPTC:DateCreated", 
        
               "XMP-exif:DateTimeOriginal", 
        
               "XMP-xmp:DateCreated", 
        
               "XMP-xmp:CreateDate", 
        
               "XMP:DateTimeOriginal", 
        
               "XMP:DateCreated", 
        
               "XMP:CreateDate", 
        
               "DateTimeCreated", 
        
               "DateTimeOriginal", 
        
               "DateCreated", 
        
               "CreateDate", 
        
               "ContentCreateDate", 
        
               "CreationDate",

Workaround

I've addressed this by force setting all dates with exiftool on the actual file as per below, after I've done push-exif date time,location
- exif.MyDateKeysCreationDate.pl.REMOVE.txt.extension.txt
- And then I go all the way (maybe to the extreme I know) and set all dates:

exiftool -config exif.MyDateKeysCreationDate.pl -overwrite_original_in_place -api QuickTimeUTC=1 -m -v0 "-DateTimeOriginal<MyDate" "-CreateDate<MyDate" "-ModifyDate<MyDate" "-FileModifyDate<MyDate" "-Track*Date<MyDate" "-Media*Date<MyDate" "-Keys:CreationDate<MyDate" "-quicktime:createdate<MyDate" "-quicktime:modifydate<MyDate" "-FileCreateDate<MyDate" "-Quicktime:ContentCreateDate<MyDate" -if 'defined $GPS:GPSDateStamp' "-GPS:GPSDateStamp<Mydate" -if 'defined $GPS:GPSTimeStamp' "-GPS:GPSTimeStamp<Mydate" -if 'defined $XMP-photoshop:DateCreated' "-XMP-photoshop:DateCreated<MyDate" -if 'defined $IPTC:DigitalCreationDate' "-IPTC:DigitalCreationDate<MyDate" -if 'defined $IPTC:DigitalCreationTime' "-IPTC:DigitalCreationTime<MyDate" -if 'defined $IPTC:TimeCreated' "-IPTC:DateCreated<MyDate" -if 'defined $IPTC:TimeCreated' "-IPTC:TimeCreated<MyDate" "-AllDates<MyDate" MVI_NNNN.MOV

But still not able to set EXIF:SubSecDateTimeOriginal so timewarp -c will still not find TZ info on EXIF file.

gspannu · 2023-10-10T18:56:03Z

gspannu
Oct 10, 2023
Author

@RhetTbull : Thank you for your detailed response. It has given me some way forward.

I could have used Lightroom but a) it is an expensive product, b) it does not do Reverse-Geocoding.

Are you aware of any tools (GitHub, OpenSource) that could take a photo file as input and reverse-geoencode the GPS location information contained in the photo to location, city, country, etc...?

Essentially, what I need is the Location. City, County, Country returned as variables (or in some shape & form) -

I am confident that I could do the rest in ExifTool.... and then as you suggest, import the photos after this processing.

I am conversant with Exiftool and use it quite often, but I am not great with python.

10 replies

gspannu Oct 13, 2023
Author

You are awesome...
I shall await your CLI and the Finder service; meanwhile I will have a play with this...
👍

RhetTbull Oct 13, 2023
Maintainer

I added a new GET endpoint that's easier to use than the PUT endpoint:

curl -X GET "http://localhost:8000/reverse_geocode?latitude=33.953636&longitude=-118.338950"

RhetTbull Oct 16, 2023
Maintainer

Version 0.0.5 of Locationator now has a menu option to "Install Command Line tools" that will install locationator CLI to /usr/local/bin. The CLI has 3 commands. lookup, from-exif, and write-xmp. from-exif reads the GPS coordinates from a file using exiftool and prints out the reverse geocoding data. write-xmp reads the GPS coordinates from the file and writes the following fields:

XMP:CountryCode (ISOcountryCode)
XMP:Country (country)
XMP:State
(administrativeArea)
XMP:City (locality)
XMP:Location (name)

XMP:SubLocation does not appear to be a valid field. There is an XMP-iptcExt:LocationCreatedSublocation. Need more info on where to write sublocation.

Usage: locationator [OPTIONS] COMMAND [ARGS]...

Options:
  --debug
  --port INTEGER
  --help          Show this message and exit.

Commands:
  from-exif  Lookup the reverse geolocation for an image/video file using...
  lookup     Lookup the reverse geolocation for a lat/lon pair.
  write-xmp  Lookup the reverse geolocation for an image/video file using...

gspannu Oct 16, 2023
Author

I am at a track day car event today… testing on this tomorrow and Wed.
Many thanks for the tool in such such short time…
👍

gspannu Oct 17, 2023
Author

Yes, just tested v0.0.6.... Works. 👍

The sub-location filed is actually a remnant of the IPTC era. There used to be a IPTC field called sublocation, but there is no direct sublocation tag in XMP.

I think the current implemented (5) tags work for the purpose. Many thanks...

Can the CLI be extended to support multiple files (locationator *.HEIC) or even something like
locationator 01.heic 02.heic 03.jpg 05.cr2 06.heic

Provide feedback

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Need help in adding EXIF data to original photos #1250

gspannu Oct 10, 2023

Replies: 2 comments · 12 replies

RhetTbull Oct 10, 2023 Maintainer

RhetTbull Oct 10, 2023 Maintainer

oPromessa Sep 8, 2024

EXIF:DateTimeOriginal (for Photos) and QuickTime:CreationDate (for Videos):

osxphotos push-exif and timewarp -c

Workaround

gspannu Oct 10, 2023 Author

gspannu Oct 13, 2023 Author

RhetTbull Oct 13, 2023 Maintainer

RhetTbull Oct 16, 2023 Maintainer

gspannu Oct 16, 2023 Author

gspannu Oct 17, 2023 Author

gspannu
Oct 10, 2023

Replies: 2 comments 12 replies

RhetTbull
Oct 10, 2023
Maintainer

RhetTbull Oct 10, 2023
Maintainer

gspannu
Oct 10, 2023
Author

gspannu Oct 13, 2023
Author

RhetTbull Oct 13, 2023
Maintainer

RhetTbull Oct 16, 2023
Maintainer

gspannu Oct 16, 2023
Author

gspannu Oct 17, 2023
Author