[Solved] Preserving Photo Dates when Uploading (without existing EXIF data)

rjacobs

Joined: 2007-02-18
Posts: 26
Posted: Wed, 2007-05-09 20:43

Hello! I am busy exporting photos from iPhoto and copying them up to gallery 2.2. Everything is in good shape as most of the meta data I need to add in Gallery can be done with the add captions "in bulk" option, EXCEPT for photo dates. To get these right I have to edit each photo indivdually, manually browsing to it in iPhoto, AND in gallery, and then hand-entering the date I see in iPhoto across to Gallery. Of course, this is quite time consuming.

I don't have EXIF data to work with in the actual photos, so I can't tap into that... only the data already entered as each photo's date in iPhoto.

I'm just curious if anyone has any insight into tools or processes that can help. I already have the dates set in iPhoto, so I'd love to somehow copy it across smoothly. This is not necessarily an iPhoto-exclusive question, as perhaps there is an intermediary tool to more easily edit dates (after iPhoto export but before gallery upload), or a way to more easily "batch edit" dates in iPhoto (without opening each photo page), etc...

I have already looked into:
-iPhototoGallery pluging for iPhoto, but it does not copy dates (only titles and comments)
-various exif editors thinking they might allow me to more easily ADD an exif date between iphoto export and gallery upload, but I have not found anything that's usable
-the forums for easy ways to bulk/batch edit things like dates (beyond the title/caption/summary data that can already be bulk-edited through the album-wide edit-captions option)... but it seems this option does not exist.

I suppose there are people out there with a similar setup and need, so perhaps someone has a more efficient way to do it?

Cheers!
Ryan
 
rjacobs

Joined: 2007-02-18
Posts: 26
Posted: Mon, 2007-05-14 01:04

I'm gunna answer my own question here, in case it's of interest to anyone else. After heaps of confusing searching, I managed to get a working solution. There really appears to be no graceful way to do this.

For mac users, with everything organized in iPhoto, but without useful EXIF date data, this is quite useful. It saves the time of manually duplicating all the date info (that was already in iPhoto) within Gallery.

It seems that iPhoto does not really make use of image header into (EXIF, etc.), and instead stores all the into you enter (date, captions, titles, etc.) within it's own XML files, independent of the actual images. What I found was an Applescript that takes that data, and via a free little command-line tool called "exiftool" writes it into the actual JPG headers within your library. Then, when you export (to later import to Gallery), that data stays with the file.

First I had to install Exiftool (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/).

Then I used the script here: http://highearthorbit.com/289/ within iPhoto. I needed to customize this script a bit to get it to also write the iPhoto date details within the EXIF header, but as you can see, it can be used to "embed" all kinds of useful details (already in iPhoto) that can automatically be extracted with the EXIF module of Gallery upon upload.

Maybe that's useful to someone else... it's gunna save me heaps of trouble in terms to preserving date info, already tediously entered to my iPhoto library, when adding photos to Gallery.

Cheers!
Ryan