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Bug 61499 - easy way to view/edit image metadata (author, copyright, image title, etc.)
easy way to view/edit image metadata (author, copyright, image title, etc.)
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: GIMP
Classification: Other
Component: User Interface
git master
Other All
: Normal enhancement
: ---
Assigned To: GIMP Bugs
GIMP Bugs
: 65181 94416 137779 321036 374858 619554 633498 640903 748087 771030 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks: 105731 118202 349224
 
 
Reported: 2001-10-01 18:03 UTC by Raphaël Quinet
Modified: 2018-05-24 10:34 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---


Attachments
Sample image with Darwin Core XMP metadata (52.29 KB, image/jpeg)
2013-11-28 15:15 UTC, Alan Pater
Details

Description Raphaël Quinet 2001-10-01 18:03:13 UTC
There should be an easy way for the user to view and edit some properties
of the current image, such as the image comment, the resolution and other
invisible information that the Gimp can store in parasites.

Currently, the only way to view or edit these properties is to use the
Perl Parasite Editor, but this solution cannot be used by most users
because:
- It requires Perl, so this will not work for Windows users or for those
  who do not have perl installed on their system.
- It is a hackers tool, not a user-friendly interface.
- It cannot provide any help about the meaning of the different parasites
  or the names of some "standard" parasites that could be added to an
  image that does not have them already.
- It cannot perform some useful functions such as replacing the current
  image comment by the default one (defined in the preferences).

As I suggested in the sixth comment in bug #51164, it would be nice to
have a menu entry to edit the invisible properties of the image.  This
could go in "<Image>->File->Properties".

For more information, see bug #51164 and bug #56443.
Comment 1 Raphaël Quinet 2001-11-25 17:53:57 UTC
*** Bug 65181 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 2 Raphaël Quinet 2002-10-02 10:22:04 UTC
See also bug #94416, which suggests to add the ability to view and edit
the XMP/IPTC metadata besides the EXIF metadata.

This "user-friendly parasite editor" should probably be a separate
plug-in, because it could depend on some XML or RDF parser that should
not be included in the core of the GIMP.
Comment 3 Raphaël Quinet 2003-05-14 17:25:04 UTC
A little note inspired by the discussion in bug #98485: this dialog will
be used mainly for editing the image comment (although it should
probably be replaced by a more specific field if EXIF or XMP is used
or if the target format supports more specific fields as mentioned in
bug #105731).  It would be nice if there was an easy way for the user
to replace the current comment by whatever is currently defined as the
default image comment in the preferences.  This could be done with a
button "Use default comment" or something similar.  This would be useful
if the user changes the default comment in the preferences and wants to
apply this change to the images that are currently open.
Comment 4 Alan Horkan 2003-07-23 18:38:57 UTC
Changes at the request of Dave Neary on the developer mailing list.  
I am changing many of the bugzilla reports that have not specified a target
milestone to Future milestone.  Hope that is acceptable.  
Comment 5 Tino Schwarze 2003-07-24 07:52:39 UTC
I'd propose a intermediate solution for pre-2.0: Let the user at least
edit the image comment.
Comment 6 Dave Neary 2003-07-26 10:33:40 UTC
Bumping a bunch of enhancement requests which will not be done by the feature
freeze to Future. 

Dave.
Comment 7 Alan Horkan 2003-08-05 18:56:32 UTC
I understand Raphaels reluctance to require an XML parser for the GIMP.  

Certainly it would be a good idea to keep the core nice and modular
but it seems likely that the next generation file format would use XML
and features like ImageMap and potentially Web Preview would benefit
from having a proper XML parser.  
Paint Shop Pro 8 ships the Apache Xerces XML parser.  
Adobe Photoshop must ship an XML parser of some kind for XMP.  

Rather than supporting Metadata only for the file types that already
support it, it would be worth looking at something like Adobe XMP (or
even just following thier standard) and for any files that dont
internally support the metadata, write it out to an accompanying
metadata file.  
By not restricting the GIMP to file format specific metadata you could
allow users to much more easily add thier own metadata as name value
pairs.  

A link to Adobe XMP in case anyone is interested.  
http://www.adobe.com/products/xmp/
XMP is a metadata specificatoins that incorporates and builds upon
various W3C specifications including Dublin Core, but it is much more
than that.  
Comment 8 Raphaël Quinet 2003-08-05 19:28:06 UTC
My concern expressed above was about linking an XML parser directly in
the core because it adds a "hard" dependency for the executable and it
would increase its size and runtime requirements.  Developing the
metadata editor as a plug-in would probably be easier because it could
attract some new developers that are not familiar with the core (I
know, this is wishful thinking).  This plug-in would of course be part
of the standard distribution and it would be linked with Xerces or
some other XML parser.  Some other plug-ins such as ImageMap could
also be linked with the same parser if it is useful for them.  If the
parser is not available on some system when building a new GIMP, the
plug-ins would not be built but that would not prevent the core from
being built.  Anyway, this was just a suggestion.  Integrating the
metadata editor directly into the core could also be useful and if it
adds some new depenencies then we will just have to document that and
live with it (the number of dependencies for the core has tripled from
1.2 to 1.3, so one more would not harm that much).

Note that the XMP format uses RDF.  Parsing and generating RDF
correctly requires more than a simple XML parser.

By the way, the link to the XMP documentation as well as additional
links providing more information about this format and its origins
are present in bug #94416, mentioned above.
Comment 9 Sven Neumann 2003-08-16 11:18:14 UTC
Please note that glib-2.0 provides a resoanable markup parser than
handles XML with a SAX-like API.
Comment 10 Raphaël Quinet 2004-03-21 18:06:30 UTC
*** Bug 137779 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 11 Ulrich.Windl 2004-03-22 10:52:21 UTC
I'd like to add: GIMP currently retrieves and stores EXIF information
when saving (it seems), but that's quite transparent for the user.
I also think that "image information" should have an EXIF tab.
Some EXIF tags should be changable by the user (like various
descriptions and comments).
In addition the EXIF standard requires the image processing program to
modify some tags (e.g. modification date, image rotation, etc.). This
might require some callbacks in GIMP (e.g. when rotating an image).
So maybe the first simple solution actually might be to allow
modifying most of the EXIF tags by the user as long as GIMP can't do
it automatically.
Comment 12 Raphaël Quinet 2004-08-16 10:49:09 UTC
A little update on this (before I post more details on the gimp-developer list):
I re-started the implementation of a metadata plug-in that registers itself as
<Image>->File->Properties.  It is based on the XMP model, which also includes EXIF
information.  It offers several tabs for easy viewing or editing of some of the
most common fields (e.g. the first tab includes author, description, etc.).  The
last tab (labeled "Advanced") contains a treeview widget with all XMP tags grouped 
by XMP schema (Dublin Core, XMP Basic, EXIF, XMP Rights Management, etc.).  The
tags that are marked as External in the XMP specs are editable, the others aren't
(with a few exceptions for things that the GIMP cannot set automatically yet).
Comment 13 Sven Neumann 2004-08-16 10:55:02 UTC
This is duplicating the work that Bill has done already, isn't it?
Comment 14 Sven Neumann 2005-07-26 14:35:04 UTC
Setting milestone to 2.4 since IMO we really need the metadata editor for the
next release.
Comment 15 Raphaël Quinet 2005-07-29 12:46:37 UTC
Hmmm...  Yeah, it's about time that I do some more cvs commits.  For those who
are reading this bug report for the first time, the work has started in CVS,
in .../plug-ins/metadata/, although some parts of that code will probably be
moved into a metadata library(-ies?) as they are likely to be used by several
plug-ins.
Comment 16 Sven Neumann 2005-11-09 12:55:47 UTC
*** Bug 321036 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 17 weskaggs 2006-05-20 22:21:00 UTC
Raising priority to Urgent because it is absolutely necessary to figure out what to do about this for 2.4.
Comment 18 weskaggs 2006-05-20 22:42:45 UTC
*** Bug 94416 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 19 weskaggs 2006-06-16 15:55:24 UTC
rasing severity to blocker because it is essential to deal with this for 2.4.
Comment 20 Raphaël Quinet 2006-08-09 11:53:34 UTC
Replacing "parasite" by "metadata" in the title in order to make this bug easier to find by those who are not familiar with GIMP internals and with the way we name our data structures.
Comment 21 Raphaël Quinet 2006-08-22 09:34:59 UTC
Please use Milestone + Priority==Urgent instead of Severity==Blocker.
Comment 22 Sven Neumann 2006-11-03 14:26:50 UTC
The "gimp-comment" parasite is now shown in the Image Properties dialog, similar to what we used to have in 2.2 in the Info dialog.
Comment 23 Sven Neumann 2006-11-05 14:00:46 UTC
So do we have to conclude that this is not going to be ready for GIMP 2.4? The bug report should then be moved to the 2.6 milestone.
Comment 24 Raphaël Quinet 2006-11-06 13:15:42 UTC
OK, milestone switched to 2.6 (assuming that 2.4 will be out Real Soon Now).
Comment 25 Michael Schumacher 2006-11-13 21:08:31 UTC
*** Bug 374858 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 26 Denilson F. de Sá 2007-01-10 02:13:20 UTC
I've just found this bug, and I would like to add these thoughts:

- File -> Properties is not a good place to put the menu item. A better place would be Image -> Properties. Of course, the Info Window is also good.

- Editing image metadata is really needed in gimp. Since this won't be done for 2.4 series, maybe only comment editing could be done before 2.4 is out?

- Currently, JPG and GIF images allows us to edit and save a comment with the image. PNG allows us to save the comment, but does not allow us to edit it. Maybe this little thing can be fixed before 2.4 is out?
Comment 27 Sven Neumann 2007-06-27 10:18:03 UTC
It is now possible to edit the image comment in the Image Properties dialog.

I wonder if we now still need the comment editors in the JPEG and GIF plug-ins. A simple checkbox as used in the PNG plug-in would simplify the dialogs.
Comment 28 Martin Nordholts 2008-05-27 17:42:17 UTC
Doesn't seem like we get a meta data editor for 2.6. Bumping milestone to 2.8.
Comment 29 Michael Schumacher 2010-05-25 07:05:42 UTC
*** Bug 619554 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 30 Michael Schumacher 2010-10-30 10:26:01 UTC
*** Bug 633498 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 31 Michael Schumacher 2011-01-29 17:40:09 UTC
*** Bug 640903 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 32 Martin Nordholts 2011-03-08 20:57:36 UTC
It doesn't make sense to aim for including this in 2.8, we're late in the project and this feature is not complete yet. Removing from milestone. We will merge this feature to the main branch when it is complete and without known bugs.
Comment 33 kneops 2011-03-09 08:03:28 UTC
Hallo Martin. Are you sure this doesn't sense? As a professional photographer I use Gimp on a daily basis, and it gives me everything I need, even in 2.6. Except for the iptc/exif info. I have to switch to an old photoshop/bridge copy only to add this information before I can send my images to clients. This is so basic, really. I can do without fancy ways of changing brushes or grouping of layers, but I can't do without the iptc/exif! And I speak for al lot of photographers out there.
Comment 34 Michael Schumacher 2011-03-09 19:51:28 UTC
Maybe you can help to find someone who wants to finish the feature?

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gimp/tree/plug-ins/metadata is the current code for metadata support (using a XMP model), and some file format plug-ins will have to be extended to read and write metadata from the actual file formats.
Comment 35 jon 2011-03-10 02:48:14 UTC
As the author of duplicate bug report 619554, I have seen my usage of GIMP drop more than 95% since I began using IPTC fields for automated WordPress captioning of .jpg's.

Simply retaining existing IPTC/EXIF info, rather than deleting it all as GIMP does now, would be a wonderful first step.
Comment 36 kneops 2011-03-10 07:33:01 UTC
Totally agree with Jon. That would be a great first step. I use Ubuntu Linux and I can add iptc tags with phatch or rawtherapee. But with every single little thing I change to an image, GIMP deletes all the meta information :(... Please please add the suggestion of Jon to the next version.
Comment 37 Martin Nordholts 2011-03-10 15:51:50 UTC
I am sorry, but we don't have an infinite number of developers and we have to prioritize our work. There are currently more important things to work on than this. At the end of the day, it is better to make a release with 2 out of 5 features 100% complete than to not being able to make a release because 5 features are each 90% complete.
Comment 38 Michael Schumacher 2011-03-10 17:31:41 UTC
In order to retain the Exif/IPTC/... metadata, the corresponding file plug-ins will have to be extended to read and write the metadata from and to the image file formats.

So, jon and kneops, maybe you can help to find someone who wants to do this task?
Comment 39 Denilson F. de Sá 2011-03-11 02:04:24 UTC
(In reply to comment #38)
> So, jon and kneops, maybe you can help to find someone who wants to do this
> task?

Just an idea... Maybe this new feature could become a Google Summer of Code. Not sure if it will be in time for the next release, though.
Comment 40 kneops 2011-03-11 06:48:38 UTC
@Denilson

That would be nice :) I'm not a coder and I'm just an end user. But aren't we all? At least 99,999 % of us. I love Open Source and as a photographer and designer I'm using Ubuntu Linux for all my graphic tasks and everything else. Except for the iptc... I have no idea how these things work, but could someone like the developer of Phatch (Ubuntu) be asked to have a look at that feature?
Comment 41 jon 2011-03-12 04:09:54 UTC
(In reply to comment #38)
> So, jon and kneops, maybe you can help to find someone who wants to do this
> task?

I am a retired Computing guy who just celebrated his 40th anniversary of Programming.  However, over all those years, I've never written anything in C.  Though I have written a fair bit of php for WordPress, including code that extracts a number of IPTC fields from .jpg's.

So, I can't see me being much help.  And I have more experience than any of my friends.
Comment 42 David Lichterman 2011-09-16 02:06:40 UTC
Hey, this is bugging me too. I'm looking at feasibility of completing this feature, with a focus on at least doing no harm (not erasing the IPTC tags). What's the deadline for inclusion into 2.8?
Comment 43 Martin Nordholts 2011-09-16 04:33:34 UTC
Contact romanofski on IRC, he is already working on this. A 2.8 release is long overdue and we're not including any more features in 2.8. Adding features at this point will postpone the release, and we badly need to make one.
Comment 44 kneops 2011-09-16 07:15:43 UTC
(In reply to comment #37)

> I am sorry, but we don't have an infinite number of developers and we have to
> prioritize our work. There are currently more important things to work on than
> this. At the end of the day, it is better to make a release with 2 out of 5
> features 100% complete than to not being able to make a release because 5
> features are each 90% complete.

Good to hear that someone is working on at least retaining the meta information already present in an image, but I disagree on that there would be more important things to work on that this, as stated in this comment. I don't want to sound too critical (I love the GIMP), but for a professional photographer this is perhaps the most important thing in the end! For archiving images, for sending the images to all kinds of media agencies, to somehow include all the necessary copyright and contact information etc. If I have an image I want to send to a news agency I don't want to write a long message with it, all the info is already preasent inside the image.
Comment 45 David Lichterman 2011-09-21 19:05:41 UTC
@kneops: i submitted a patch for preserving IPTC data in JPEG images. see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=629044
Comment 46 Michael Natterer 2013-10-27 13:23:39 UTC
This completely fixes the "viewing" part, editing of IPTC tags
is currently disabled tho.

commit 21bed1e2fb438fa5721bddb0573a724ae0024455
Author: Hartmut Kuhse <onkelhatti@gimp.org>
Date:   Sat Oct 19 18:38:01 2013 +0200

    Completely rewrite metadata handling using gexiv2
    
    Based on original patches from Hartmut Kuhse and modified
    by Michael Natterer. Changes include:
    
    - remove libexif dependency and add a hard dependency on gexiv2
    - typedef GExiv2Metadata to GimpMetadata to avoid having to
      include gexiv2 globally
    - add basic GimpMetadata handling functions to libgimpbase
    - add image and image file specific metadata functions to libgimp,
      including the exif orientation image rotate dialog
    - port plug-ins to use the new APIs
    - port file-tiff-save's UI to GtkBuilder
    - add new plug-in "metadata" to view the image's metadata
    - keep metadata around as GimpImage member in the core
    - update the image's metadata on image size, resolution and precision
      changes
    - obsolete the old metadata parasites
    - migrate the old parasites to new GimpMetadata object on XCF load
Comment 47 Alan Pater 2013-11-28 15:15:37 UTC
Created attachment 263030 [details]
Sample image with Darwin Core XMP metadata

Viewing a sample DwC (Darwin Core) image in the Gimp. The DwC XMP metadata is not
visible.

Some image viewers, such as eog & gthumb can view this metadata. 

Exiftool can read, edit and write DwC tags.


Notes: Darwin Core (DwC) is a XMP metadata standard used for sharing
biodiversity information. http://rs.tdwg.org/dwc/
Comment 48 Michael Natterer 2013-11-28 17:50:46 UTC
Please file this as a separate bug, this is the general metadata
support bug.
Comment 49 Jehan 2016-08-18 16:06:15 UTC
Adding the "newcomers" keywords. Now that the core feature is there, adding the "editing" part should be not too hard.
Comment 50 Jehan 2016-09-09 22:22:41 UTC
*** Bug 771030 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 51 Jehan 2016-10-20 20:53:53 UTC
*** Bug 748087 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 52 Michael Natterer 2018-01-02 13:44:30 UTC
Um, isn't this fixed now? We have a full blown XMP editor now.
Comment 53 Elle Stone 2018-01-02 14:09:37 UTC
There's a Metadata Editor, but it doesn't seem to have a tab for XMP data. There are tabs for Description, IPTC, IPTC Extension, Categories, GPS, and DICOM.

The Metadata Viewer has an XMP tab that does show the sample image's XMP data.
Comment 54 GNOME Infrastructure Team 2018-05-24 10:34:11 UTC
-- GitLab Migration Automatic Message --

This bug has been migrated to GNOME's GitLab instance and has been closed from further activity.

You can subscribe and participate further through the new bug through this link to our GitLab instance: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gimp/issues/10.