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_David_C_Anderson_
Known Participant
October 31, 2008
Question

Can I automate the writing of XMP metadata into JPEG and TIFF files?

  • October 31, 2008
  • 91 replies
  • 11729 views
I have written an ASP.NET 3.5 website application on behalf of an annual international photographic competition. Entrants will be uploading digital photos in either JPEG or TIFF format. Ideally, I would write entrant identity and image title information into the XMP metadata for each image immediately after upload - but so far, I have failed to find any way to do this in ASP.NET.

Thousands of images are involved, so I need to find a way to automate the metadata insertion, perhaps with some sort of script that uses a text file (extracted from the SQL Server database on my website) as the source of the metadata for a batch of images. Is this the sort of task that can be done by writing a script for Bridge CS3? Are there any scripts already in existence that I could use? I am a total beginner in this area.

I use a Win XP PC, though I have a colleague who, I think, has CS3 on his Mac (running under the Leopard OS), so scripts for either platform might be usable.

David
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91 replies

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_3poulakia_
Known Participant
November 4, 2008
Hi all,

Could someone please email me the script (photomadesATgmailDOTcom) or if you could just repost the complete one here at the forum? I try copying and pasting from Paul R, "Can I automate the writing of XMP metadata into JPEG and TIFF files?" #10, 31 Oct 2008 2:17 pm but I cannot get it to work. I must be missing something.

Thank you
Michael
Paul Riggott
Paul Riggott
Inspiring
November 3, 2008
Many thanks again X, I will certainly give it a try.
Paul Riggott
Paul Riggott
Inspiring
November 3, 2008
Thanks X, I just realised it was my fault it didn't work on the Mac! I was using an external USB drive formated as NTFS and I believe Macs and NTFS do not go together well. As soon as I moved the files to Fat32 it all worked again.
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_xbytor_
Known Participant
November 3, 2008
Paul_R@adobeforums.com wrote:
> I was using an external USB drive formated as NTFS and I believe Macs and NTFS do not go together well.

google for "ntfs-3g mac os x". It's what I use and it seems to be pretty stable.

-X
Paul Riggott
Paul Riggott
Inspiring
November 3, 2008
I have just tested the script on my other PC XP Pro and it works on that, now I have tried it on a G5 Mac and it didn't work! so I will have a look at that machine tonight (I do not know my way araound a Mac so it will be a challenge!).
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_xbytor_
Known Participant
November 3, 2008
Paul_R@adobeforums.com wrote:
> I have just tested the script on my other PC XP Pro and it works on that, now I have tried it on a G5 Mac and it didn't work! so I will have a look at that machine tonight (I do not know my way araound a Mac so it will be a challenge!).

I just tried this on BridgeCS4 on my Mac. It worked fine. One thing that you
might want to change is to place the call to unloadXMPScript(); at the end the
same block as the call to loadXMPScript(). And put a try/catch block around
everything in between.

-X
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_David_C_Anderson_Author
Known Participant
November 3, 2008
I am able to invoke ExifTool from ASP.NET, but only in a local test environment. Doing this on my live website would require a higher level of security access than ISPs are willing to give for a shared hosting environment. I've no doubt that I could use ExifTool for running a batch update (though I've not yet tried doing that) but I am still very much interested in finding a way to make Bridge scripting work for me.

Paul,
Somebody emailed me privately to say that they had also had problems in getting your scripts to work. Since they work on your PC, is there perhaps a dependency on some other software component?

David
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_3poulakia_
Known Participant
October 31, 2008
Hi xbytor
I know, downloaded and tried to use the ExifTool on the Mac.
Unfortunately I am not very good with the command lines.

Michael
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_David_C_Anderson_Author
Known Participant
October 31, 2008
Hi xbytor,
Thanks for the suggestion. As it happens, someone else on another forum (http://thedambook.com/smf/index.php?topic=3672.0) also suggested using ExifTool and I am in the middle of experimenting with ways to invoke it from ASP.NET. This might prove to be a very useful method, though I would still like to find a way to make Bridge scripting do the job.

David
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_3poulakia_
Known Participant
October 31, 2008
Hello all,

I was looking for the same/similar script.
A way to batch import description, title, description writer into metadata of jpg and tiff files through Bridge CS3 on a MAC using a csv file.

When I came over to your post I thought "heaven"
So I copied your code and in order to avoid compatibility problems I placed my csv file inside the folder.
Unfortunately it returns NO DATA

If you get to solve this puzzle could you please post it here?

Thanx in advance
Michael
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_David_C_Anderson_Author
Known Participant
October 31, 2008
I'm using Win XP Pro but I doubt if that's relevant.

Anyway, thanks for all the help so far. It's much appreciated. It may well turn out that I'm doing something stupid. I will have another look tomorrow morning with a fresh brain.

David
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_xbytor_
Known Participant
October 31, 2008
There is always ExifTool (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/).
It's a command-line program that will take text (and images) as input and modify
the images accordingly. I use it in cases where I need to update a massive
number of images in a single pass.

-X
Paul Riggott
Paul Riggott
Inspiring
October 31, 2008
No I am using Bridge CS3, Windows Vista. I think we need Bobs script now David.

It's strange that both scripts work on my machine but not on yours.
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