stripping off and storing XMP data? anyone?

ajgauthier · November 1, 2006

I wasn't sure where to ask this...but I figured all the gurus hanging around the hack/wizard area may have somewhere to refer me.

Short story is that I am looking for an 'industrial grade' tool/widget/software that extracts XMP data (created in Photoship) from a JPG image (like IPTC type XMP) and writes it to a database (like SQL). Why? Astronomical PR image project I'm involved in, thousands of images to extract XMP from and write to a database.

I've been a-googling and haven't found much. Seems that other 'image gallery/digital library' software packages *might* have this feature, but it's all proprietary.

Anyone? Thoughts? Places to send me to look?

thanks,
Adrienne

pat.kane · November 1, 2006

There are definitely libraries out there that will extract EXIF and IPTC data from an image and put into a database. Google PHP IPTC and you'll quickly find a few tools. These don't necessarily create a XMP file, but if all you're looking to do is put the data into a database, it shouldn't matter.

Another option that might be easier is to find an existing image cataloging program that already writes this type of data to a database.

Depending on what data you want to extract, you could use something like ThumbsPlus from Cerious Software. It uses a MS Access database file format natively and the Pro version can be set up for mySQL and similar databases. All that you would need to do is tell it to capture the IPTC fields into ThumbsPlus user fields. One word of warning though -- the current version of ThumbsPlus only supports IPTC/IIM and not IPTC/XMP. Supposedly the next version will be XMP compliant.

Good luck.

jud · November 17, 2006

See the perl tool exiftool.

http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

It has the best EXIF support that I've seen, including XMP. I don't know how much expertise you have, but it's a relatively straight forward process to convert the exiftool output into a format that can be imported into a database, or written directly to the database. Do you have the database already?

ajgauthier · November 17, 2006

thanks
thanks - we'll have to play with it.

Basically - we have metadata coming in with JPGS for astronomical images, as XMP from a custom template in Photoshop/Fits Liberator. We need to read the XMP from the JPG, and in that process copy it and plop it into a database (SQL). The EXIFtool looks like it just reads and rewrites, but doesn't export into anything 'ploppable' into a database. We'll see...gotta play with it.

Thanks for the suggestions!

Adrienne

jud · November 17, 2006

Yes, you're right about not being "plopable". However, it would be quite easy for someone with a little bit of perl skill to take the output from exiftool and turn it into something like comma-separated values (CSV) that could be loaded into the SQL database. Setting up the database itself might take a little more work, however. Ping me offline if you want more info.

- jud

jud@dagnallphoto.com

ajgauthier · November 17, 2006

thanks all!

jud wrote:

Yes, you're right about not being "plopable". However, it would be quite easy for someone with a little bit of perl skill to take the output from exiftool and turn it into something like comma-separated values (CSV) that could be loaded into the SQL database. Setting up the database itself might take a little more work, however. Ping me offline if you want more info.

- jud

jud@dagnallphoto.com

thanks Jud,

Right now I'm in the conceptual - 'can it be done? how?" stage for grant writing and explaining the project to people. I'm not a programmer, I hire people for that, but I do have an understanding of how things work conceptually, enough to brainstorm out pro's/con's/challenges with a design team.

With this EXIFtool program, I see it can be done...thanks!

Adrienne

stripping off and storing XMP data? anyone?

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