How can I change the Camera Make & Model metadata

[newmikeman]

I have a lot of images I scanned from film that I took over the years and I want to be able to modify the metadata to reflect the actual camera that I had used to take the original picture, along with the date I took it and other stuff as usual. The make & model are shown on the Details panel but they can't be edited as far as I can tell, so they all say "Nikon" and "Nikon SUPER COOLSCAN 4000 ED" respectively.
Thanks
Mike

[tstoddard]

I don't do any scanning so I'm not sure about what options you have to change those fields directly. From what you wrote, I'm assuming that the scanner generates that metadata. Perhaps there's some way to configure the scanner to write the desired camera information initially. I also don't know if that technical metadata can be modified in PSU. I've never attempted to do so and I'm not at home right now to test that. Perhaps it can be done using a script.

Also, I'm thinking that you might want to leave the metadata that the scanner creates (at least some of it) alone so that you still have a record of what scanner was used. You could create a custom field or fields in which to store the original camera information or perhaps to store the original scanner information before you modify it. Technically, the scanner is the device that is actually capturing the image of the original picture so having the scanner make and model in your metadata makes sense. From a purist's perspective, putting the make and model of the camera in the metadata of a scanned image is creating inaccurate information and possibly doing a disservice to that camera manufacturer.

I know I'm being a little ridiculous here but I thought it wouldn't hurt to make the point and give you some food for thought.

[Preston B]

I just looked at the technical metadata for one of my 4x5 scans. It shows Microtek as the camera Make, and Artixscan 1800f as the Camera Model. This info is correct, and as Mike says, cannot be changed. I am certain this metadata comes from my scanner software (VueScan). The only items that can be changed are the Date Time Original, Date Time Digitized, and Orientation.

I am with Tom: I'd leave this alone. As he says, you could create custom fields to store that info, which would be the easiest and safest way to go.

--P

[fbungarz]

Hi Mike,
Unlike XMP and IPTC PSU does apparently not allow you to change Exif Data of your files (with a few exceptions: dates, GPS, anything else?). There are quite a few tools out there that you can use to change Exif. One is for example Phil Harvey's excellent Exif Tool. It is command-line driven, but you can install ExifTool GUI, which is not particular user friendly though. You may want to think about what you are doing though. There are good reasons why Exif typically should not be changed. Exif refers to the digital capture device such as a digital camera, or in your case a scanner. Yes, I know, you might personally prefer to have data about the original device stored in the files, say the fact that you took the original photo with a Nikon F3 or a Canon EOS. If that is valuable or even essential info for you, it might be a better choice to use PSU's custom XMP to store that info or perhaps simply tag the images with labels in your catalog. That way you have both: info on the original device you used to take the photo with (the analog camera) and the device that you used to capture digitize it.
Cheers,
Frank

[newmikeman]

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies.
I'm afraid I have been changing these fields for years, since long before XMP was around and when the only way to record something extra was by hijacking some other data field. I recently came across a few more transparencies and scanned them. The Exif data that the Nikon scanner provides is minimal and really of no practical use - the dimensions and dpi are in the regular JPEG data and the Exif only adds the scanner make & model. Well I only have one film scanner and the identity of original film camera seems of more interest to me, so I elected to make the changes. Nowadays I could perhaps use XMP, maybe for the scanner make & model, or even one of the now-numerous IPTC data that perhaps isn't used (by me).
I guess I shall have to look into the script business but it seems rather daunting at the moment. I'll solve this problem later on if at all, after I've got to grips with PSU assuming I do go ahead with it.
Thanks again for your help.
Mike

[PhilBurton]

Thank you all for your thoughtful replies.

I guess I shall have to look into the script business but it seems rather daunting at the moment. I'll solve this problem later on if at all, after I've got to grips with PSU assuming I do go ahead with it.
Thanks again for your help.
Mike

Mike,

About a week ago, I posted a message with my list of what I would need to know in order to use scripts effectively. http://forum.idimager.com/viewtopic.php ... 35#p110253 Some other people seem to agree, but so far no one has actually responded to my questions.

Relating to the fact that you are scanning images, do you have any custom metadata to reflect the film camera used, the film, e.g. Tri-X or Kodachrome 25, etc. If this is something you have done, or are interested in doing, then I'd like to excahnge private messages with you on this point. Or, if other people feel that this topic is important, then we can have a separate public thread.

Phil

[newmikeman]

Phil

Interesting that you are a software product manager. Until I retired a year or two ago I was professional services director for a successful software company, so I probably have some similar ways of looking at software. I started out a programmer 50 years ago and always dabbled in programming for fun. However, even though I did once learn Pascal it didn't have objects then and I'm not sure I really want to learn this now-unfashionable language so late in life. Now if the scripts needed one to know Lua that would be a lot more interesting!

My custom metadata was in ring binders where I kept notes about cameras, films and speeds, darkroom settings for printing and a list of photos and their title/caption/subject. All hand written. About 20 years ago I started writing a program to manage a catalog of my photos along with hierarchical keywords, and I'm still using that. It just never reached a stage where it was ready for public use and in any case I would never have found time to market and support it. Now I'm looking at published products like PSU that I might migrate to and leave the maintenance burden to others. I tried Lightroom but it's way too complicated and clunky and I don't want to have anything to do with Adobe owing to its attitude to its customers. Nor do I want to sign up for £8.57 a month for the rest of my natural life. On the other hand at least there is enough of a market for people to write and sell very heavy printed books about using Lightroom.

XMP embedded in JPEGs seems to me the way to go forward with adding interesting/useful information to one's photos, as apparently one can add custom data fields into it. I'm not sure what PSU or any other off the shelf software would make of custom fields though.

Best of luck

regards, Mike

[Mke]

About a week ago, I posted a message with my list of what I would need to know in order to use scripts effectively. http://forum.idimager.com/viewtopic.php ... 35#p110253 Some other people seem to agree, but so far no one has actually responded to my questions.

I suspect that the reason is that the majority of us are photographers rather than coders, and that even though scripts may be useful, PSU can do most things we find necessary without them. Personally I'm sure that it would interesting to learn some Python, and I do occasionally hack a bit of (other people's) PHP and VBA so I guess that would be a head start. But with the absence of readily available information coupled with the lack of a pressing need, it may take a while to get around to it...

[PhilBurton]

Phil

Interesting that you are a software product manager. Until I retired a year or two ago I was professional services director for a successful software company, so I probably have some similar ways of looking at software. I started out a programmer 50 years ago and always dabbled in programming for fun. However, even though I did once learn Pascal it didn't have objects then and I'm not sure I really want to learn this now-unfashionable language so late in life. Now if the scripts needed one to know Lua that would be a lot more interesting!

My custom metadata was in ring binders where I kept notes about cameras, films and speeds, darkroom settings for printing and a list of photos and their title/caption/subject. All hand written. About 20 years ago I started writing a program to manage a catalog of my photos along with hierarchical keywords, and I'm still using that. It just never reached a stage where it was ready for public use and in any case I would never have found time to market and support it. Now I'm looking at published products like PSU that I might migrate to and leave the maintenance burden to others. I tried Lightroom but it's way too complicated and clunky and I don't want to have anything to do with Adobe owing to its attitude to its customers. Nor do I want to sign up for £8.57 a month for the rest of my natural life. On the other hand at least there is enough of a market for people to write and sell very heavy printed books about using Lightroom.

XMP embedded in JPEGs seems to me the way to go forward with adding interesting/useful information to one's photos, as apparently one can add custom data fields into it. I'm not sure what PSU or any other off the shelf software would make of custom fields though.

Best of luck

regards, Mike

Mike,

For all my years of film photography, my metadata "data store" is a pile of yellow surveyors' notebooks, because they use waterproof paper. Of course, there is no consistency to that metadata. Once I start scanning all my slides and negatives, I will deal directly with those issues.

About Lightroom. Couple points here. Right now I'm working out all thee issues that that I can have all the metadata about an image aligned between PSU and LR, to the extent possible. I'm still working through all the issues so I don't want to say any more now, but if I run into a roadblock, then I'll post a question. Also, IF PEOPLE ARE INTERESTED, I'll write up my notes into a Word doc or PDF and post them.

Actually, once I figured out the "paradigm" about LIBRARY, DEVELOP, MAP, BOOK, SLIDESHOW, PRINT, AND WEB, it's actually pretty easy. I was just making up a slideshow of a recent vacation and as I was selecting pictures for inclusion in the slideshow, I kept flipping between LIBRARY and DEVEOP. It sort of grows on you.

If you don't want to pay Adobe $10 a month forever, and neither do I, you can still buy LR 6 for US $ 145 (I think). You download the Lightroom CC trial, and when you install the license key, it becomes LR 6, meaning you lose a few recent features like DeHaze.

Phil Burton

[sanphotgn]

Custom XMP. When I learned about custom XMP, I realized it solved many issues for my workflow. I figured out how to write simple custom file info panels for Adobe Bridge. I still needed a DAM, though. I researched the DAM software available and made a purchase. Only to find out the product I bought really didn't support custom XMP. I bought Lightroom. It didn't even support custom XMP. I was stuck in the middle of a project, in the middle of the workflow, .... On another product's forum I yelled help and luckily someone recommended IDimager.

I use Lightroom (v 5.7) and Photo Supreme now. I have several custom XMP fields. I still have to hijack one field (in Photo Supreme) to do what I want do in Lightroom. I use sidecar files. If the database goes away, I can still find the photo by searching through the XMP files. (I realize nothing is perfect and there could be issues with locating, losing, ... XMP files.)

There are probably only about eight dozen of us that care about custom XMP.

I posted this feature request in Mantis a while back:

http://mantis.idimager.com/view.php?id=1585

Kevin

[PhilBurton]

Custom XMP.

---

There are probably only about eight dozen of us that care about custom XMP.



Kevin

Kevin,

I'm one of that number.

[fbungarz]

Hi Phil,
if you are one of the few people in support of custom XMP, then I urge you to vote for the feature request in Mantis (I would encourage any other user of PSU who might appreciate full custom XMP support to do so...). It seems there aren't many people interested, but reading this (http://forum.idimager.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=23991) there might be more than we think there are...
Cheers,
Frank

[PhilBurton]

Hi Phil,
if you are one of the few people in support of custom XMP, then I urge you to vote for the feature request in Mantis (I would encourage any other user of PSU who might appreciate full custom XMP support to do so...). It seems there aren't many people interested, but reading this (http://forum.idimager.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=23991) there might be more than we think there are...
Cheers,
Frank

LOK,Frank. I'm the OP on that thread!

Phil

[bimo]

@Mike

There is no reason why you shouldn't replace make & model to your liking for antique(!) equipment. I'm doing that as well without any regrets. Just be aware that some software (eg DxO) need the information to process files. But they only stuck to actual (camera-)equipment.

There are almost two differnt ways to write your favourite information to the fields:

• PSU: define a parent label for the make (eg NIKON) and a child label for the model (eg NIKON F5). In the label's detail profile map the label to tiff:Make and tiff:Model respectively. Activate process parent label as well in the child label's detail profile and assign the child label to the appropriate files (the parent label will be assigned automatically). Sync the files and you've got what you want!
• ExifTool and ExifToolGUI: hit the Exiftool direct button, enter -make="NIKON" -model="NIKON F5", mark the files you want to process and hit the return key. In PSU read metadat from these files and you're almost done as well.

If you want to keep the information of the scanner used create a label for that purpose (of course without mapping the label to a metadata field...). Perhaps let the label be written to the keywords.

For the film used you may do it alike.

The advantage of this approach compared to using custom fields for scanner and film is to have the desired information in any other software available as well.

HTH

[PhilBurton]

@Mike

• PSU: define a parent label for the make (eg NIKON) and a child label for the model (eg NIKON F5).

In my case, it would be NIKON and F2.

The advantage of this approach compared to using custom fields for scanner and film is to have the desired information in any other software available as well.

HTH

Bimo,

What if you took both approaches? Added custom fields and added this information as keywords?

Do you (or anyone else) know if custom fields can even be read or accessed (through plugins) by Adobe Bridge or Lightroom?

Phil