Preserving photo comments?

On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:12:54 +0000, Terry Pinnell wrote:

Recently I've been trying to tidy up my thousands of photos, almost all
JPGs. For many of them I find that the JPG Comment which I carefully
typed months or years ago has been lost.

It's my own fault for repeatedly forgetting a major flaw in PaintShop
Pro 8, which does this whenever a JPG is edited. The Comment is
corrupted beyond recognition and the IPTC Caption is deleted entirely.
(BAD, BAD, Jasc!) Presumably later versions of (now Corel) PaintShop Pro
have fixed this, but I'm too comfortable with PSP8 to change.

I'm re-entering many of these Comments and simultaneously copying them
to the IPTC Caption for good measure, in case there are tools which can
access one but not the other. When they EXIST, it's so convenient to
access them in IrfanView, although it would be handy to see both Comment
and Caption alongside each other:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/Irf...BCaption-1.jpg

What do others do to preserve their notes about photos over the years
and decades please? Of course, I can always fall back on text files, but
that's nowhere near as convenient as data 'embedded' in the photo.

ExifTool will let you write any data you want into the files
EXIF,IPTC,XMP.Create your own custom tags,back it all up to csv or xml
files,restore it anytime.
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Lots of Windows tools that use ExifTool,see-
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/#writing

Dave

--
Registered Linux User #444770
Fedora

Dave wrote:

On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:12:54 +0000, Terry Pinnell wrote:

Recently I've been trying to tidy up my thousands of photos, almost all
JPGs. For many of them I find that the JPG Comment which I carefully
typed months or years ago has been lost.

It's my own fault for repeatedly forgetting a major flaw in PaintShop
Pro 8, which does this whenever a JPG is edited. The Comment is
corrupted beyond recognition and the IPTC Caption is deleted entirely.
(BAD, BAD, Jasc!) Presumably later versions of (now Corel) PaintShop Pro
have fixed this, but I'm too comfortable with PSP8 to change.

I'm re-entering many of these Comments and simultaneously copying them
to the IPTC Caption for good measure, in case there are tools which can
access one but not the other. When they EXIST, it's so convenient to
access them in IrfanView, although it would be handy to see both Comment
and Caption alongside each other:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/Irf...BCaption-1.jpg

What do others do to preserve their notes about photos over the years
and decades please? Of course, I can always fall back on text files, but
that's nowhere near as convenient as data 'embedded' in the photo.

ExifTool will let you write any data you want into the files
EXIF,IPTC,XMP.Create your own custom tags,back it all up to csv or xml
files,restore it anytime.
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Lots of Windows tools that use ExifTool,see-
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/#writing

Dave

Thanks, but looks very complicated, and I dislike most command-based apps.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

On Thu, 14 Mar 2013 14:52:11 +0000, Terry Pinnell wrote:

Dave wrote:

On Wed, 13 Mar 2013 17:12:54 +0000, Terry Pinnell wrote:

Recently I've been trying to tidy up my thousands of photos, almost
all JPGs. For many of them I find that the JPG Comment which I
carefully typed months or years ago has been lost.

It's my own fault for repeatedly forgetting a major flaw in PaintShop
Pro 8, which does this whenever a JPG is edited. The Comment is
corrupted beyond recognition and the IPTC Caption is deleted entirely.
(BAD, BAD, Jasc!) Presumably later versions of (now Corel) PaintShop
Pro have fixed this, but I'm too comfortable with PSP8 to change.

I'm re-entering many of these Comments and simultaneously copying them
to the IPTC Caption for good measure, in case there are tools which
can access one but not the other. When they EXIST, it's so convenient
to access them in IrfanView, although it would be handy to see both
Comment and Caption alongside each other:

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/4019461/Irf...BCaption-1.jpg

What do others do to preserve their notes about photos over the years
and decades please? Of course, I can always fall back on text files,
but that's nowhere near as convenient as data 'embedded' in the photo.

ExifTool will let you write any data you want into the files
EXIF,IPTC,XMP.Create your own custom tags,back it all up to csv or xml
files,restore it anytime. http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/

Lots of Windows tools that use ExifTool,see-
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/#writing

Dave

Thanks, but looks very complicated, and I dislike most command-based
apps.

That's why there's GUI's made for it...
ExifTool GUI
http://u88.n24.queensu.ca/~bogdan/
GUI2 for ExifTool
http://gui2-for-exiftool.weebly.com/
Proxel EXIF Tool (ps plugin}
http://www.proxel.se/exif.html

from the link..
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/#writing

Dave

--
Registered Linux User #444770
Fedora