IPTC JPEG Tagger

What is IPTC

Their JPEG image meta data standard defines an application segment (APP13 segment) appended after the image data which can hold data in a pre-defined set of tags.

UPDATE 2025: The original Perl library my script used is no longer supported but the excellent exiftool does everything we need and much more, so I have written a script to front end the same options but that simply calls exiftool to do all the work.

NEW STUFF -- setpictags.sh shell script fronting for exiftool

OLD STUFF -- settags.pl

Only the APP13 segment is modified, this means the image data is not modified in any way so it is will not change the image or resolution of the image. The utility can also read any of the standard as well as user defined tags in an image and provide a list of these.

This software is free and you may do anything like with it except sell it. If you modify it for the better please let me know so I can update my version too.

Using settags

Supported IPTC tags

Single value tags

• 'b' => 'ByLine',
• 'B' => 'ByLineTitle',
• 'c' => 'CopyrightNotice',
• 'r' => 'Credit',
• 'S' => 'Source',
• 'l' => 'ContentLocationCode',
• 'L' => 'ContentLocationName',
• 'E' => 'ReleaseDate',
• 'I' => 'SpecialInstructions',
• 'F' => 'FixtureIdentifier',
• 'H' => 'Headline',
• 'a' => 'Caption/Abstract',
• 'C' => 'Country/PrimaryLocationName',
• 'P' => 'Province/State',
• 'O' => 'SubLocation',
• 'T' => 'City',

Multiple value tags (comma separated)

• 'k' => 'Keywords',
• 's' => 'SupplementalCategory',

    This program supports processing of metadata (IPTC/EXIF) in JPEG (and other)
    files, many files may have many keywords, categories and comments added,
    replaced or updated at the same time.

    usage: $0 -[U|R|A] [-o predest] [-k key1,key2...] files

     -U             : Update in place (default mode)
     -R             : Replace existing with specified set
     -A             : Add to existing tags
     -h             : this (help) message
     -v             : verbose output
     -i             : information only, files will not be modified
     -k k1,k2...    : comma separated list of keywords
     -s c1,c2       : comma separated list of (supplemental) categories
     -S source      : Identifies the original owner of the objectdata
     -b byline      : Name of content creator
     -B bylineTitle : Title of content creator
     -c notice      : A copyright notice
     -r credit      : A credit to the provider of the data (not necessarily the owner)
     -l ISOloc      : The 3 character ISO country code for content (input not validated)
     -L locName     : Full location name for content
     -C countryName : Full country name for content (this is used by most tools including Photoshop)
     -T cityName    : Full town/city name for content
     -P stateName   : Full province/state name for content
     -O subLocName  : Full SubLocation name for content
     -E ReleaseDate : Earliest date provider intends object to be used
                      Format is ISO 8601 (CCYYMMDD, not validated)
     -I instruction : Editorial special instructions concerning use of data, such as embargoes
                      and warnings
     -F fixture     : Keyword used for search/recall (no spaces), e.g. EUROWEATHER
     -H headline    : A publishable synopsis of the content of the object
     -a abstract    : A caption/abstract describing the image
     -o predest     : put updated versions into this directory or use as a prefix for files,
					  by default original files are updated in place

     Notes:
     1. Both Category and SupplementalCategory have been deprecated in the latest standard so
     these are not be supported (supps are support in this version only)
     2. The location code/name automatically populate both the Location and Country IPTC tags

     
    examples:
      settags.pl -i mypic1.jpg /home/data/pics/mypic2.jpg /home/data/pics/d*.jpg
        -- would simply output text readable tag information on all the files

      settags.pl -o new -k art,picture mypic1.jpg
        -- would add art and picture as keys if it not already there and output the file
           as newmypic1.jpg

      settags.pl -o new/ -k art mypic1.jpg
        -- would add art as a key if not already there and output the file
           as mypic1.jpg in the directory ./new

      settags.pl -v -A -L UK -b "Your Name" -k magic,fly mypic*.jpg
        -- would add magic and fly as keys and Your Name as the byline and set the 
           country to UK directly to the files mypics*.jpg.  The files would be modified
           to contain the IPTC data but no image data would be changed

Requirements

In addition the following Perl libraries must be available: Text::ParseWords and File::Basename

My code should work with Perl v4 and above, on my Linux system at home I am on v5.8.7 and all the code has been tested on this version, but have not used anything specific to this version of Perl in the code so it should work with older versions. I cannot state the same for the third party library.

The Source Code

• Update: v1.8, 23rd August 2018, added support for Province/State information (use -P) and SubLocation (use -O)
• Update: v1.5, 25th January 2007, added Country/PrimaryLocationName and City tag support as Photoshop and Microsoft are now supporting these tags
• Update: v1.4, 2nd November 2006, added caption/abstract tag support as the Alamy site and various other sites and products seem to be using this tag

More EXIF info and specs: http://exif.org

Warnings:

1. Not all of the Image::MetaData library functionality has been tested by me and I take no responsibility for images trashed by any bug therein.
2. You must properly install the Perl library for Image::MetaData functionality in an appropriate place for your Perl compiler to find it to allow this script to work. If there are problems try changing the use clauses below to point to your library structure

My Code

• addname.sh - a simple shell script which shows how to add a byline, then a location with a byline (just an example script)
• getkeywords.sh - a shell script to find images with a matching set of keywords
• mktagdb.sh - a script to make an XML database of all tags used in a set of photographs

The Library

Other Products

• Picasa by Google, fully supports reading and writing of IPTC tags and much more like GeoCoding and in later (Windows) versions face recognition. It was amazing, some of the most amazing software I have seen with the facial recognition working scarily well, but Google withdrew the locally installable version so you would have to use their online service to store photos. You can still find the original in various places, here I have a copy of the last released version (picasa39-setup_3.9.141Build159.exe) or slightly older version here (picasa-3-9-138-150-multi-win.exe) so you can download and enjoy. As I use Linux, I run this (Windows) version (with facial recognition) under Wine, it works perfectly well.
• BreezeBrowser - visual tagger and workflow tool
• Kalimages - build a library of images indexed by IPTC tags, good search facility, can export selection to XML.
• Adobe Lightroom - fully supports IPTC tags and collates them while importing images so you can search the library using a variety of techniques.
• exif - portable C command line based utility for managing EXIF info but also supports IPTC tags, available on POSIX systems (e.g. GNU/Linux, xBSD, MacOS X, etc.) and Win32.
• exiftool - platform independent Perl library / command line based utility for managing EXIF info but also supports IPTC tags, available on Unix, Linux, MacOS and Windows.
• Fav Software Links - links to my fav software for Graphics and such things.

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