I’m having pretty bad results with metadata when using software like Rawtherapee & GIMP to create files in different formats (tiff, png, jpg). It looks to me like there is no alternative but to edit metadata myself. However, it can be very tedious entering the data on all the different files that might result from image editing activity. It would be very helpful if metadata items could be selectively transferred between files. ExifTool/ExifToolGUI doesn’t quite get it done.
Metadata++ gets good marks in some WikiPedia reviews but when I try to install on Windows the anti-virus software objects. This made me think that learning what others may know about Metadata++ might be worthwhile before bypassing anti-virus protections.
Good to know. Thanks! However, in my case it is Avast that won’t install it. The referenced list indicates that Avast thinks it is clean. Maybe I need to figure out how get Avast to comment given the source you referenced.
My knowledge is a bit limited but from what I can see there is nothing simple about metadata. My basic purpose is to preserve the metadata created by the camera when developing/editing images. Then I’d like to add a few items of my own to include identity of the original photo, a description/caption, and possibly a location where the photo was shot. It looks to me like the normal metadata items are different depending on the format used for an image file. For example, png format does not normally include EXIF items of metadata even though GIMP seems to do so. Even though GIMP allows one to view the XMP metadata in the xcf file it seems that it won’t write it to any file in any format that it supports. When it comes to support for EXIF metadata it seems that GIMP does output a fairly extensive amount but only items that it explicitly specifies. In that, valid EXIF items that I can add using ExifTool end up being ignored by GIMP.
My big concern is that if I were to copy all the metadata from one file to another, especially after adding some items of my choosing, I’ll end up with image files that do NOT conform to convention. Especially in the case of png format. From what I can see, I’m by NO means certain, tif format supports most everything I might want to use meaning I could add the items I want to it possibly even duplicating some information so that information I want is contained in both EXIF items as well as XMP items. Then I’d like to be able to transfer just the items of my choosing to the files that GIMP and possibly other editors produce where I should be able to know that I am conforming to normal conventions.
Rawtherapee has quite limited meta data support and doesn’t work well with other software when it comes to metadata tags. You have to tag all the files after exporting them or do all your tagging in Rawtherapee. Unfortunately the tagging you do to raw files in Rawtherapee will not be read by other software but the exported files should have all your Rawtherapee tagged tags.