Will tonfotos be writing any metadata (exif/ xmp / IPTC) to jpeg properties?

Personally, I’m not interested is .xmp sidecar files

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    Hi Bobb, in future yes. Current version does not change files in any way.

        Andrey I really like how FastStone Image Viewer allows you to do this in bulk. I use it to change dates to correct dates (or at least close to that date). Check out their “Change Timestamp” feature under the Tools menu in the program. Would LOVE it if you had this feature. 😀

          a month later

          Andrey

          so the metadata is locked to tonfotos?

          I’d also prefer to be able to save metadata to jpeg itself, but if that’s not available, would want sidecars (that car be used by any other program) as a minimum…

          Q: How much work is there in creating sidecars/.xmp files?
          Q: How far down the priorities list is the ability to save metadata to sidecars/jpeg itself?

              Jacko probably we need to be more specific here. What kind of metadata storing you are missing? Writing xmp into jpeg is not that complicated, but there is not too much to write, as far as I know. The thing is that Tonfotos at this point of time is not focused on editing images and its metadata, mostly on finding, grouping, organising and comfortable viewing. Yes, face recognition is big thing, and there is a lot to save, but I am not aware about standardised and universally accepted format of storing that data in xmp. Therefore we had to fallback to our own ini files format.

              I would really appreciate if you share what use case and concern you have in mind.

                Hi

                I understand this is Beta so you must have alot of things to “do”.

                I like tonfotos as it provides a linux option as I’m moving away from MS OS.

                However, with photos I would like to know the tagging etc is portable.

                This is partly because I send photos to parents and they can then have the metadata. So if the metadata is “trapped” in 1 big .ini file then they would need to retag - even if they switched to tonfotos.

                Secondly, if something happens to tonfotos, eg in 10 years, no longer developed (like picasso/Windows Photo Gallery) or terms and conditions change (eg need to pay $100/day to use 😆) then I wouldn’t want to restart the process in another application.

                I understand the premise to not edit the original file, so if sidecars can be written, it appears XMP files are the most flexible and useful across products. If custom tonfotos fields are created in xmp file, also duplicate to IPTC and EXIF fields.

                https://shotkit.com/xmp-file/
                https://havecamerawilltravel.com/xmp-sidecar-files/

                  Jacko thank you for giving Tonfotos a try!

                  Sure I know what sidecar means 🙂 And I think this approach is quite outdated. It started long ago when it was not common to write metadata inside JPEG, and not much applications were compatible with JPEG’s with XMP metadata inside. Today this is part of JPEG standard and there is no point writing metadata separately if you can write it inside file itself, which is not a problem at all. Even photo cameras are writing XMP information inside JPEG these days, even though they have not much useful information to write there.

                  Probably I did not express myself right. It is not that Tonfotos does not want to change original images at all, it is just that this editing functionality is not first priority. The priority is viewing, organising, cataloguing, etc., and all that just does not require writing into files, mostly reading.

                  So, based on your answer, I understand that you mostly talking about tags. And that is true, Tonfotos does not fully support tags at this moment (and that is the reason this thread was started by Bobb ). It can read from XMP and show tags, but it cannot edit it, and obviously, it does not write edited tags into images and/or sidecar files.

                  This feature will eventually be implemented, it is just little bit further down the roadmap. And when it will be, obviously, tags will be stored inside images metadata, otherwise there is no point in having this functionality at all. We already have albums, and the only difference between albums and tags is that tags are stored in images, while albums - in database only.

                  So, apart from tags, is there any other metadata you would expect to see embedded into images?

                        3 months later

                        Andrey +1 on the tags. Anything that can make the work invested maintainable, portable, and provide some modicum of future proofing.

                        If any of the database indexing management software had an option to (in place or in bulk) put data into the Windows recognized ‘tag’ field, I’d be thrilled. Not just ‘tags’ but I’d like to be able to put Album names, Folder Names, and Face names as well. Pretty much a text version of whatever data TF has on the item, stick it somewhere in the file itself so they stay together.

                        Obviously, indexing files is a totally different ballgame than modifying them, and as a user, letting any software touch the original file is a leap of faith.

                        But…. output a CSV file listing the full path of each photo and what data has been associated it, that modifies nothing, yet still would go a long way in giving users control over the data.

                        At least then I’d be able to print out a hard copy of that data, just in case there ever is a zombie apocalypse!

                          The ability to run queries and make custom reports (return all the pictures of JENNY and AUNT BERTHA labeled BIRTHDAY) would be even better. Take it a step further and provide a method to make a copy of all the photos matching that criteria to a specified directory, and now users can interact with subsets of photos outside of TF, using the data stored in TF, without TF having to make any changes to the originals.

                          Usually I don’t share my roadmap, but I am working on updating metadata in files right now. This is huge work as there are so many formats to support, and not all of them have same capabilities. First release will be with jpeg only supported, but right now I already have version that can rotate jpegs in place without touching image data itself (just by changing Orientation tag in Exif), and next is thing on the list is Tags.

                          7 days later

                          +1 on this request. The rotation is a big help which was released this morning. It would be to further help those of us with photos that are taken with older digital cameras/scans, for which other important info are not captured - ie, location, timestamp, being the other two important pieces of info.

                          6 days later

                          New release (1.2) supports XMP tags.

                          a month later
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