Display IPTC captions/tag from picture in slideshow (1 Viewer)

ddj147

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Summary:

I use Google Picassa to add captions to my photos which use the IPTC standard (as does Adobe Photoshop). The tags/captions are stored with the picture file (.jpg). I would like to be able to view these captions when using MP slideshow mode in MyPictures.

Description:

The functionality asked for is similar to Picassa's slideshow mode where it displays the IPTC captions when in slideshow. I'd love an option in MP where you can perhaps toggle the captions on/off in Setup and then have them display in auto slideshow mode.

Given that I'm not very technical, please forgive if the following is totally irrelevant, but there is some publically available source code for Java at http://www.drewnoakes.com/code/exif/ I realise that MP is .Net based but maybe there's some synergies ?

Anyway, just my 2c worth for some person to please add this functionality.
 

chefkoch

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    I am often using ACDSee.

    And made some personal notes for this feature some time ago.

    It could be possible to search the folders for pictures and import the infos into the database like in music.

    Then will be different views possible, that depends on how good you pictures are tagged. The pictures can be gouped by people, which are shown on it, locations where the picture is shot and so on...

    These are just ideas, and i think the first step will be just showing some info during a slideshow.

    regards
    chefkoch
     

    tomtom21000

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    I asked for something similar for music (like the tags on last.fm)
    Gives you a far more flexible approach than the genre, e.g. "80s" in combination with "heavy metal" and "metal ballads".

    It is similar to "John" plus "beach" for a picture search.

    Thinking about it, it could also be helpful for some people with huge movie collections.

    So maybe a more general design approach could cover all areas?

    tomtom
     

    knutinh

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    September 4, 2005
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    I asked for something similar for music (like the tags on last.fm)
    Gives you a far more flexible approach than the genre, e.g. "80s" in combination with "heavy metal" and "metal ballads".

    It is similar to "John" plus "beach" for a picture search.

    Thinking about it, it could also be helpful for some people with huge movie collections.

    So maybe a more general design approach could cover all areas?

    tomtom

    one problem would be that it would be proprietary. maening that the team would have to write the tagging software (catering for all different desires). and the effort to tag data would not be reusable if one wishes to view media in anything else than mp.

    but of course, adding a mp layer that generalise media tags could retain the best of both appoaches.

    regards
    -k
     

    chefkoch

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    tomtom, if i understand you right, you wanna do a search with keywords and then show all the pictures. If you mean that, i don't understand knutinh, because it is already possible to add keywords to the iptc data.
    It is only needed to have a database import, which imports the keywords and link it to the picture ids.

    My problem currently is: There are two categories of picture-software. The first is based on a database. (ACDSee) The second one can edit the exif and iptc data but doesn't use predefined keywords. (IrfandView)
    I just wanna select a folder and then edit the data of each picture or some data for all pics.
    Will give Picasa a try in a few minutes.

    regards
    chefkoch
     

    knutinh

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    Ideally, the EXIF-info should be something like:

    <Location>New York </Location>
    <Activity> Shopping </Activity>
    <People> Jon, Laura, Ashley</People>
    <Comment> We were out to buy groceries for our holiday dinner</Comment>

    In addition, EXIF allready contains relevant tags like resolution etc.

    MP should recognise the tags and let you search among one or more cathegories such as "location = Paris, time = 15.12.xx through 31.12.xx, comment = *christmas*"

    Of course, it should follow some standard so that I can use an external program to select multiple files for fast input of location for instance. My canon camera was supplied with software for doing this, but I am afraid that the info is contained in an external database and can only be read by this particular software.

    I may have misunderstood you, chef. I though you meant that the tags should be written manually directly into a proprietary MP database.



    But all of this is kind of wishful thinking. I would be more than happy to see support for reading and overlaying the EXIF "comments" field on top of the image when doing slideshows.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXIF

    "Exchangeable image file format
    (official abbreviation Exif, not EXIF) is a specification for the image file format used by digital cameras. It was created by the Japan Electronic Industry Development Association (JEIDA). The specification uses the existing JPEG, TIFF Rev. 6.0, and RIFF WAVE file formats, with the addition of specific metadata tags. It is not supported in JPEG 2000 or PNG.

    Version 2.1 of the specification is dated June 12, 1998 and version 2.2 is dated April 2002.

    The Exif tag structure is taken from that of TIFF files. There is a large overlap between the tags defined in the TIFF, Exif, TIFF/EP and DCF standards.

    The metadata tags defined in the Exif standard cover a broad spectrum including:

    • Date and time information. Digital cameras will record the current date and time and save this in the metadata.
    • Camera settings. This includes static information such as the camera model and make, and information that varies with each image such as orientation, aperture, shutter speed, focal length, metering mode, and film speed information.
    • A thumbnail for previewing the picture on the camera's LCD screen, in file managers or photo manipulation software.
    • Location information, which could come from a GPS receiver connected to the camera. As of 2004 only a few cameras support this, though. Some people therefore use a normal receiver to track their movements, and then post-process the images by matching the timestamps in the images with the log from the receiver and can so add the missing information to images.
    • Descriptions and copyright information. Again this is something which is most often done when post-processing the images, as only high-end camera models let the user choose a text for these fields. (Although this feature is becoming more and more apparent even in lower end compact digital cameras).

    Problems
    The Exif standard has a number of drawbacks, mostly relating to its use of legacy file structure, including:

    • The derivation of Exif from the TIFF file structure using offset pointers in the files means that data can be spread anywhere within a file, which means that software is likely to corrupt any pointers or corresponding data that it doesn't decode/encode. This is why most image editors damage or remove the Exif metadata (particularly the maker notes) to some extent upon saving.
    • The standard defines a makernote tag, which allows camera manufacturers to place any custom format metadata in the file. This is used increasingly by camera manufacturers to store a myriad of camera settings not listed in the Exif standard, such as shooting modes, post-processing settings, serial number, focusing modes, etc. As this tag format is proprietary and manufacturer-specific, it can be prohibitively difficult to retrieve this information from an image (or properly preserve it when rewriting an image).
    • The standard only allows TIFF or JPEG files — there is no provision for a 'raw' file type which would be a direct data dump from the sensor device. This has caused camera manufacturers to invent many proprietary, incompatible 'raw' file formats. To solve this problem, Adobe developed the DNG format (a TIFF-based raw file format), in hopes that manufacturers would standardize on a single raw file format.
    • The Exif standard specifically states that colour depth is always 24 bits.[1] Many modern cameras can capture significantly more data than this (e.g. the Nikon D70 captures 36 bits of colour per pixel). Since Exif/DCF files cannot represent this colour depth, many manufacturers have developed proprietary, non-compatible RAW image formats.
    • Most digital cameras can also capture video — the Exif standard has no provision for video files.
    • Exif is very often used in images created by scanners, however the standard makes no provisions for any scanner specific information.
    • Photo manipulation software sometimes fails to update the embedded thumbnail after an editing operation, possibly causing the user to inadvertendly publish compromising information.[1]
    • Although there is no specified limit on the size of the embedded thumbnail, it is not possible to have Exif metadata larger than 64 kB in a JPEG image due to the restrictions of the JPEG file format. This has forced some camera manufacturers to create a non-standard way of placing a second (larger) thumbnail in the image for display on the camera's LCD. Since it is a non standard extension, if a user re-saves the image using image editor software, then the second thumbnail is typically lost, and the picture may no longer be compatible with the camera that took it.
    "


    "
    regards
    Knut
     

    chefkoch

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    I think all user are responsible for their files. So MP should never touch any of them, not the pictures and no music files.

    All users can use 3rd party tools to edit their meta data.

    And that's the point: If we have so much different formats, why not using plugins like we do for the music-tagreader. So if someone want's to support some pro-proprietary raw formats, he can write the plugin for support it.

    Okay, you are right displaying the infos is the first important step. And would be real cool.

    Here are some information about the IPTC standard:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Press_Telecommunications_Council
    http://www.iptc.org/IIM/

    XMP should be the standard after IPTC:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extensible_Metadata_Platform

    I tried XnView full (all plugins), it is freeware, easy to use and you can change the most important IPTC tags.

    regards
    chefkoch
     

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