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_Diane_King_
Known Participant
July 16, 2008
Question

script to replace metadata on a volume full of thousands of images

  • July 16, 2008
  • 2 replies
  • 593 views
We have a database of photos on a single server volume covering years (thousands of high res photos). The images are inside folders inside folders inside folders, yet I need to Replace Metadata with a copyright template on every photo on the volume. Is there any way I can have Bridge replace the metadata on all the images in one command instead of having to go into every folder and select the contained images and choosing the option from the menus (which could possibly take days, if not weeks to do)? I tried doing a search by file type, but it generated so many results that after about a half an hour of searching, Bridge crashed.

Bridge CS3 on Mac OS 10.4.11 working on a Windows server.
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2 replies

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_Diane_King_Author
Known Participant
July 17, 2008
Thanks for the suggestion. I've taken a look at the tool, but it looks more than a little scary to use. It's like reading another language to me. I'd be terrified to try and use something like that and make a horrible flub and overwrite necessary tags in an entire volume of files just because I used or mistyped a simple (and not understood) command. That just wouldn't do at all. I'll see if our IT people can figure out the code, if not ... I guess we'll keep doing it manually a folder at a time.
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_xbytor_
Known Participant
July 17, 2008
Diane King wrote:
> Thanks for the suggestion. I've taken a look at the tool, but it looks more than a little scary to use. It's like reading another language to me.

It's a language that I speak. If you run into trouble send me the details of
exactly what it is you want to do and I'll see if I can come up with something.

-X
--
for photoshop scripting solutions of all sorts
contact: xbytor@gmail.com
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_xbytor_
Known Participant
July 16, 2008
If you have a very large number of file, you really should use exiftool for this:
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

It does work on Macs :)

The -r option will cause it to recursively scan subdirectories. In your case, I
would use the -@file.txt and put the command line arguments you need to set the
metadata values in the image files.

Also, this solution is the fastest way I know of to get the job done.

-X
--
for photoshop scripting solutions of all sorts
contact: xbytor@gmail.com
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