Hi everyone, Our Institute collects thousands of photos of our work. They are all stored in folders on our intranet site. The folders contain a document that explains the given event. That way if anyone opens a folder, they can see the set of photos and then see a document that explains where the photos were taken, the event, etc.... The problem of course - if one of the photos travels out of the folder structure, we often can't tell where the photo is from. I know that lightroom/keywording, etc.. is the right answer, but the problem is that people form all over the world are uploading pictures.

So I was wondering - is there an easy tool to batch add content to jpeg exif data? So the event name, short description etc... can travel with the photos? I tried doing some google searches, but got confused. Thank you!!

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From loiswakeman/Lois (16,546) on February 16, 2012 7:57:13 AM CST If by easy, you mean "I am happy to use the command line", then it looks like EXIFtool might do the job for you. Perhaps I was luckier with my search terms :-) Reply

From ollie0626/Jonathan (3,494) on February 16, 2012 10:58:25 AM CST Hi Lois - thanks! I did see some command line programs. I was wondering if there were any more 'user friendly' applications as well. Reply

From marshall/Marshall (11,997) on February 16, 2012 12:02:12 PM CST You do have to use something to add the content, whether by having it in the file at first or by doing it with the upload. You have options like using LR or other media management tool as a desktop app or using something like Portfolio Server. Depending on what you use to drive your Intranet, you may have options there. What is the intranet built on? If you're talking folders, is it a network drive (no help there) or something like Sharepoint? Reply

From ollie0626/Jonathan (3,494) on February 16, 2012 12:18:33 PM CST Hi Marshall. We run SharePoint. I bet our IT dept can trigger a program to write to exif data on upload....hmmm.. And I guess the best way to do it manually is have our communications dept run the pictures through lightroom and export the jpegs with the content in the exif data. Reply

From ollie0626/Jonathan (3,494) on February 16, 2012 12:19:05 PM CST Wait - sorry. It isn't SharePoint. Just a network drive. Although they could move this to sharepoint....I wonder how that would help. Do you know? Reply

From marshall/Marshall (11,997) on February 16, 2012 5:01:49 PM CST The more recent version of SP include some ability to work with tags/keywording that might help you. However, I think you had the answer in your original post: the right answer is to use some system that is designed for this in particular. You don't need to be a stock library, but you need to have some of that capability to tag, locate, and manage that work. If you're collecting thousands of photos and they're used for corporate communications purposes, then starting with the Communications staff (assuming you have some(one)) would make sense. I can easily conceive of a web system that enables remote people to enter some information into a form, select a set of pictures from a local drive, and then puts those files into a database while updating the exif in the files, but it's probably more appropriate for a function like this to seek something that exists already and is designed to manage media libraries. Reply

From ollie0626/Jonathan (3,494) on February 19, 2012 8:20:38 AM CST Thanks a lot Marshall. I need to think this through. Maybe work with IT for a solution. As is, the pictures get scattered and no one knows what the pictures are of once they leave the folder architecture. Reply

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