Apple’s new operating system Snow Leopard was announced as an update that would not have many new features but rather lots of improvements under the hood. Preview is one good example: not only have they added useful image browsing options, but they have finally fixed a number of metadata issues.
Archive for the ‘Metadata’ Category
Timestamps and Timezones
Monday, March 16th, 2009If you take a lot of pictures while travelling, you will come across the timezone issue sooner or later. What would you set your camera’s clock to? UTC? Local timezone? Local timezone plus Daylight Saving Time? Even if you opt for UTC – like I do – you would still want to have some reference to local time.
New York City lies in the EST (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-5) zone, also known as EDT when DST rules (UTC-4).
Unfortunately, there is a big metadata issue, due to the fact that the predominant EXIF standard does not provide for timezones in the timestamp tags. This may get particularly confusing if your workflow includes geotagging. Here is a suggestion how to set up a workaround using ExifTool and Automator.
ExifTool and the Automator
Sunday, March 8th, 2009How often are you faced with a regular metadata manipulation that your favourite image processing application just does not offer? Think of filling in your copyright data in one go, correcting your camera’s time settings for a number of images or setting your home geotags.
Apple Automator
Put the power of Phil Harvey’s excellent ExifTool and Apple’s Automator together and you will have replaced many previously tedious tasks with a simple action.