edit metadata

search metadata

PATS ... Pictures and their Stories

Why this program?

• intuitive handling
• comply to standards

There are great programs for reading and writing metadata of pictures: digiKam, gthumb, Darktable, jExifToolGUI to name just a few.

Have you ever tried to let you grandmother use one of them?

This program is for you if you just want to drag&drop pictures into the program window and start writing.

To be compatible with a wide range of other programs Exiftool is used under the hood. The Exiftool setting -use MWG complies to the recommendations of the MWG (Media Working Group).

The metadata is often stripped from a picture when sent by chat programs or mail. If the file name preserves some information, e.g.

• file name = IMG_20240102_081509.jpg

the program will guess

• date 2024年01月02日 08:15:09

For

• file name = IMG_20240102_081509 Walking with Maria in London.jpg

the program will guess

• date 2024年01月02日 08:15:09 and
• title Walking with Maria in London.jpg.

Summary of Features:

• read and write title
• read and write description
• read and write keywords
• read and write date/time (a picture was taken)
• rename file by date/time and title
• guess date/time and title from file name
• Display and search all metadata a picture holds. (You will be surprised about all the stuff a picture reveals about the camera and lens including serial number, unique id's and much more.)
• Remove all metadata from a picture.

Acknowledgements

Exiftool for reading and writing data from and to images.

https://font2png.com/ for Icons.

A special thank goes to my mother for her wish list and feature requests.

Requirements

Summary

In short for Debian Linux...

su -c 'apt update && apt -y install default-jre libimage-exiftool-perl darktable'

In short for Ubuntu Linux...

sudo apt update && sudo apt -y install default-jre libimage-exiftool-perl darktable

In detail...

Java

You need Java to run the program. How to check? Open a terminal and type...

java -version 

This prints the version of Java. If not, how to install Java?

For Debian Linux...

su -c 'apt update && install default-jre'

or

su -c 'apt update && install default-jdk' 

For Windows, Mac see.

Exiftool

You need Exiftool to read and write metadata from and to pictures.

Exiftool must be installed. How to check? Open a terminal and type...

exiftool -ver 

This prints the version of Exiftool. If not, how to install Exiftool?

For Debian Linux...

su -c 'apt update && apt install libimage-exiftool-perl'

For Windows, Mac see.

Darktable (optional)

You need Darktable if you want to display camera RAW pictures. (Without Darktable installed you will still be able to view and edit the metadata.)

How to install Darktable?

For Debian Linux...

su -c 'apt update && apt install darktable'

For Windows, Mac see.

Installation

Download

Download the file pats.jar.

Run

In a terminal type...

java -jar pats.jar 

To create a start script under Linux...

echo "java -jar pats.jar" > run_pats.sh
chmod +x run_pats.sh
./run_pats.sh

Technical Details

Underlying command to read an image:

exiftool -use MWG DateTimeOriginal -modifydate -Description -Title -Headline -Keywords path-to-your/image.jpg 

To write an image:

exiftool -use MWG -overwrite_original -DateTimeOriginal=".&checktime(2024,01,12,':') 18:05:26+01:00" -modifydate=now -Description="your long comments" -Title="your title" -Headline="your title" -Keywords="bird,sun,coast" path-to-your/image.jpg 

The parameter -use MWG will cause Exiftool to use techniques to allow certain overlapping EXIF, IPTC and XMP tags to be reconciled when reading, and synchronized when writing. See for more information.

MWG tags used

• DateTimeOriginal ("specifies when a photo was taken")
• ModifyDate ("specifies when a file was modified by the user"
• Description
• Keywords

EXIF/IPTC tags used

• Title
• Headline

To view all metadata:

exiftool path-to-your/image.jpg 

To strip all metadata the picture will be copied and the metadate removed from the copy. Example: "coast.jpg" would result in "coast_no-meta.jpg":

exiftool -overwrite_original -all= path-to-your/image.jpg 

TODO: To convert camera RAW pictures the picture will be copied to a temp folder and converted.

darktable-cli pictures.CR3 . --out-ext ".jpg"