Trying to add metadata to files.

Today I was mostly trying to add metadata to photos of the Long Mynd from the third day of our Shropshire holiday, back in July.

I had a couple of problems - I wanted to add the exif data for the camera, lens, gps position, etc. to an image that had been processed through PTGUI. I tried using Adobe Bridge to export the XMP from one of the original images, and then import that XMP into the pano, but while it imported some info, it didn't import the GPS info.

So I downloaded exiftool (and 7zip so I could untar and gunzip it, and ActivePerl x64 so I could run it). The first problem I had here was that exiftool wouldn't run unless I added a .pl file extension to it. Not a big problem, but it would be nice if it could be consistent between Windows and Linux. So I posted on a Microsoft answers forum to see if I could get some advice on how to execute a file without a file extension (couldn't find anything via Google).

Then, when I ran exiftool to copy the tags from the XMP file to the pano, I found that it overwrote the existing XMP tags in the pano with the values from the XMP file, so for example, the tiff:BitsPerSample was changed from 8 bits (the bit depth of the pano) to 16 bits (the bit depth of the file that I extracted the XMP to copy from). So I posted on the Cpan forum to see if you can get exiftool to only copy new tags, and not overwrite existing tags (again, couldn't find anything via google or looking at the exiftool tagsfromfile documentation).

After that, I found I had a problem with .psb files, in that I couldn't add any metadata to them, both via exiftool GUI and via Adobe Bridge. So after googling turned up nada, I posted to the Adobe forums about that. I got a reply saying that they could add XMP/metadata to .psb files okay.

So I tried it myself with a NEF file like they suggested, and it worked. I then did various tests to try and find out what was stopping me from adding XMP to the files I was originally asking about, but couldn't find anything that would stop me from adding XMP to any new .psb files that I created.

So I just took the layers from the problem .psb file, and dumped them into a new .psb file, saved it, and deleted the old .psb file. Then I could add XMP to the new .psb file no problem.

One of the normal files that I needed to add metadata to was a picture of a large puddle on top of the Long Mynd. When we were in Shropshire it was very rainy, so I thought for the description I could write how rainy it is in Shropshire. But when I checked, I found out that actually it's less rainy in Shropshire than it is generally in England.

I also managed to find some info on rainfall on the Long Mynd, which is higher than the average rainfall for England, but meant to be relatively low rainfall for the elevation. The site also gives quite a bit of other info about The Long Mynd: http://www.taw.org.uk/demo/geography/cmv/cmv.swf.

In the evening I played on Colin McRae Dirt a bit and watched an episode of Power Rangers with L. I also re-processed an image I was playing with yesterday using Topaz Adjust, taking into account tips from Topaz Adjust users on the Flickr Topaz Software group.

Food
Breakfast: Bowl of Choco Moons; Cup o' Tea.
Lunch: Rosemary Ham with Iceberg Lettuce Sandwich; Bag of Chilli flavour Doritos; Apple; Small fake Mars Bar cooked in Puff Pastry; Cup o' Tea; Cherry Liqueur.
Dinner: Slice of Pepperoni Pizza; Chips; Peas. Pudding was Lemon Pud with Custard. Coffee; Cherry Liqueur; Chocolate Truffle.