Image, metadata, DAM – Getting metada from pictures

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Since 6 months I am working on a new project: launching a new back office that should replace the previous one based on Drupal.
The project was almost a wreck as we try to reproduce, a on a Symfony based application, what was previously existing even even features endorsing the worst habits!

The main and unacknowledged objective was to copy the existing and previous tool and to focus on features that can be new and interesting.

Like I usually say with a shrug: “Anyway…” to encourage my mind to move on and not to get stuck on what should have been done!
So anyway, as somebody say “regret is a second mistake”.

It was the occasion like always to discover again some elements both technical and editorial. As you may know, using a picture without credits is illegal when you are using a picture to illustrate a post, you need at minimum to declare the copyright and to ensure that you have the right to usage this image.

Long time ago, I did a post about this subject. The concern is still the same, how can you leverage on EXIF metadata from pictures and populate the data inside a CMS for credits, description and title.

At the time, I was using Photoshop and use WordPress to grab the data. This time I have been looking for open source tools to make.

Here is 2 of the tools that have bee using :

  1. exiftool is a command line tool that allows you to change and manipulate the EXIF metadata of images.
  2. detox is a utility designed to clean up filenames. It replaces difficult to work with characters, such as spaces, with standard equivalents. It will also clean up filenames with UTF-8 or Latin-1 (or CP-1252) characters in them (i.e: foo bar – quz.avi -> foo_bar-quz.avi).
#install tools with homebrew
brew install exiftool
brew install detox
 
#renaming files inside a directory named photos
detox -r -v photos/
 #go to path
cd /your-path-to-the-images/_values_images/
 
#check infos
exiftool -a -u -g1 000_1G87QJ_v1.jpg

The metadata output in the console
Image, metadata, DAM - Getting metada from pictures

#check infos
exiftool -T -createdate -aperture -shutterspeed -iso DIR > out.txt
 
#check infos and output in a text file named out.txt
exiftool -a -u -g1 000_1G87QJ_v1.jpg > out.txt

Source: https://arslan.io/2018/04/18/tips-tricks-to-batch-edit-exif-metadata-of-photos/

Conclusion: Indeed, it is a very good habit to grab EXIF from pictures. All these EXIF stuff is part of a true DAM (Digital Assets Management). It is worth working around that question, especially if you are using images from Reuters, AFP, Getty or any photographic fund or archive. If done well, leveraging on EXIF will save much more time later when it is time to look for content inside your CMS. This is critical for a useful DAM.

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Published by Bruno Flaven

Bruno Flaven has been a Project Manager in a wide variety of Internet business applications both in Mobile and in Desktop for 20 years now. You can find more information about his professional life on his personal website (www.flaven.fr) or his linkedin profile: https://fr.linkedin.com/in/brunoflaven. He is currently working In France Media Monde (FMM) mostly on mobile applications (iOS and Android). He is currently P.O for a Backoffice project made with Symfony. He also made few trainings to facilitate the handling of the tools that he helps to make.

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