Write to IPTC Core Data of Image Files?

[Ben Rubinstein]

On 10/03/2016 06:59, Sannyasin Brahmanathaswami wrote:
> I asked about this years ago...but the subject is back up here.
>
>   We would like to engage volunteers to help classify and organize our image archives.  This comprises some 1/2 million images, not all of which are significant, but still present in the archives.
>
> It is possible of course to build a data base and connect metadata in the SQL tables/columns to filenames etc. but what we really need to do is stay away from those kinds of external dependencies (been there, done that --> snake pit of non-portability) and write directly to the IPTC Core data of the images.
>
> We can do this in Adobe Bridge, and I can also leverage SIPs on the Mac using shell scripts from LIvecode. But what I really need is a web based solution that will run on LInux/Ubuntu.  Any ideas? Marks Smith's old ID3 tags script, still works even today, and this was a native LC solution (no external)  has anyone got ideas for doing this for images/IPTC data?  once images are tagged with robust IPTC metadata, then we can do anything with them from there and it's all portable...
>
> BR

This isn't directly helpful, but related information; when we needed to do 
this for a client some years ago, we originally planned to do IPTC and XMP, 
using the command line ExifTool.  However, we found interesting variations in 
what could be ready by which applications.  In the end (the bit that makes it 
particularly unhelpful since you want to run it on Linux) we found that the 
best solution, ungainly thought it was, was to have our Rev app (as it was 
then) direct GraphicConvertor through AppleScript to set the IPTC fields. That 
produced the most reliably readable results.  As far as I know, the client is 
still using this tool in their workflow.

Checking my email archives, I find that that this was in 2008... so things may 
have changed since then! But I would strongly suggest that you test a variety 
of methods for setting the data, seeing how it can be read back in a variety 
of apps.

other BR