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ljnunez85
Participating Frequently
December 6, 2017
Answered

changing UPPER to lowercase keywords in Bridge or Lightroom

  • December 6, 2017
  • 2 replies
  • 4832 views

Hello,

Apologies if this has been covered, but I'm new and somewhat on a deadline.

I have a batch of about 1,000 images for work that have been tagged with a keyword and then an ID number. They are currently in uppercase, but I need them in lowercase. The keyword and the ID number are also in quotations (to qualify them as a single keyword together).

Example:

current keyword, including quotation marks:

"BLSSI.COM_PERSON_ID=964820"

ideal:

"blssi.com_person_id=964820"

If it weren't for the quotation marks, I think I could figure out how to batch-rename them, but since they are in quotation marks, it makes for every file (which all have different numbers at the end) being its own, separate keyword. Does that make sense? I'm looking for a way to just change the letters within the quotation marks to lower case instead of upper case.

Is there any hope for me? I can also work in Lightroom, but I'm not savvy with scripts or coding. I'm on a Mac with Bridge 2017 and Lightroom CC (I can upgrade if need be, too).

thanks

Laura

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer Stephen Marsh

Hi Laura, yes there is hope!

I don’t have time to post the full solution now, however I’ll try to come back to you with an ExifTool example.

With luck somebody will post some script code for Bridge or Photoshop.

2 replies

L
ljnunez85Author
Participating Frequently
December 19, 2017

Brilliant! This does work. I have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to options for fixing these keywords now. Thank you (both!) again so much, and hey, happy holidays in your corner of the world!

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 20, 2017

Not a problem Laura, please mark SuperMerlin’s reply #10 as the correct answer, thanks!

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Stephen MarshCommunity ExpertCorrect answer
Community Expert
December 6, 2017

Hi Laura, yes there is hope!

I don’t have time to post the full solution now, however I’ll try to come back to you with an ExifTool example.

With luck somebody will post some script code for Bridge or Photoshop.

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
Community Expert
December 7, 2017

You will need to download and install ExifTool:

 

ExifTool

 

Installation instructions here:

 

Installing ExifTool

 

ExifTool For Dummies

 

Getting started: Command-line ExifTool in Windows

 

______________________

 

The Mac OS CLI code:

 

exiftool -api 'Filter=tr/[A-Z]/[a-z]/' -TagsFromFile @ -subject '/Users/username/Desktop/my file.jpg'

 

or

 

exiftool -api 'Filter=tr/[A-Z]/[a-z]/' -TagsFromFile @ -subject '/Users/username/Desktop/my folder'

 

 

The Win OS CLI code is the same, however you would change the single straight quote marks ‘ to double straight quote marks “ and the path to the file or folder would of course be your Windows formatted path. Ensure that copy/paste does not change the quote marks from straight to curly!

 

I’ll try to post an animated screenshot later, work on copies of your original files. These commands will create a duplicate of the original file anyway, adding an _original to the original image filename while leaving the processed file named as per the original… It is also possible to turn of the safe duplicate feature, and to process files in sub folders under the main top level input folder, and to ignore certain file types or only process certain file types etc.

L
ljnunez85Author
Participating Frequently
December 8, 2017

Wow, thanks very much to both of you! I will try both methods out and let you know what happened.


Supermerlin,

This worked! I tested uploading some images to our software afterwards, and they are perfect. Thanks so very much, and thanks to Stephen for showing me how to save the code as a script and importing it to Bridge.

Stephen, I wanted to see if I could still do it with the exif tool. You’re right… I’m not sure how I thought I had to add the directory after the end of the bit of code you indicated, but omitting that, the process ran just fine. However, I did not see the changes we were aiming for reflected in the keywords after (I see that it made a copy of the file with _original at the end, and the change was not reflected in this file or the other copy without the _original). What DID change, however… well I’ll just show you:

original:

1920S PORTRAITS; BANGS; EV-IN; "MOORE,COLLEEN"; PORTRAIT; VPX COPY; ECPORT0612; ", BLSSI.COM_PERSON_ID=3019798"; HEADSHOT

modified:

1920s porTrAiTs; bAnGs; eV-in; "moore,colleen"; porTrAiT; VpX copY; ecporT0612; ", blssi.com_person_id=3019798"; HeAdsHoT

haaaaha. Look at that wild upper-and-lower case alternating!

If you want to get to the bottom of this, I’m willing to keep putting into practice what you want me to try, because I’m slowly learning some of this. Otherwise, I do think Supermerlin’s fix will allow me to finish the rest of my project. What shall we do?

again, so many thanks to both of you!!

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