[lawsonblack]

Hello,

I am a new member but have read most of the posts on this forum regarding DL Pro. I wanted a downloader that would separate my images by a date scheme and add info to the IPTC fields. In order to test these needs, I made a test database of several hundred images with several cameras,dates taken, folders and subfolders in a directory on my hard drive. Using DL Pro to separate the images into a date scheme worked great. The scheme I finally settled on is C:\TEST\YYYY\YYYYmm\YYYYmmDDHHMMSSXXa.jpg where 'XX' is a two character field from camera mapping on token {T8} and 'a' is a one character field from {la} only placed when uniqueness is needed for files with identical times taken (in my case, this is alomost always only for edited versions of images). I also used the JPEG Resolution Plug-in to change that value to 300 dpi. All of this worked perfectly.

However, I have not been able to place info into the IPTC fields. For the test I tried token {o} for the filename in the Author field and my name in the copyright notice field thru Edit>IPTC/XMP. I also checked 'Add IPTC/XMP to data to downloaded images' box in General Preferences although I'm not sure if this is necessary. Anyway, I checked the downloaded images afterwards with both Irfanview and Exifer and found nothing had been added. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?

I must be doing something really stupid because others have made this work as I found from reading the posts!

As an aside, I use Paint Shop Pro V8.1 and found that images with a .psp or .pspimage extension are not recognized and are ignored. As an experiment, I renamed these to .tif and that brought them into the downloaded files just fine. I then renamed them back to .psp and PS Pro loaded them just fine including any saved alpha channels and selections. Any comments on this practice?

Thanks,

Bill

[Clive]

However, I have not been able to place info into the IPTC fields. For the test I tried token {o} for the filename in the Author field and my name in the copyright notice field thru Edit>IPTC/XMP. I also checked 'Add IPTC/XMP to data to downloaded images' box in General Preferences although I'm not sure if this is necessary. Anyway, I checked the downloaded images afterwards with both Irfanview and Exifer and found nothing had been added. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?
Breeze Downloader Pro (BDP) is designed to download camera-produced files either with a direct connection or with a card reader. The IPTC facilities are invoked as you have read.

As an extension, BDP can treat a folder as if it was a card in a camera or reader, but with exceptions. Files in a folder on the hard drive are likely to have had IPTC blocks added, so that function of BDP is disabled. And only file times that are created in-camera by supported cameras are processed - other files are ignored.

BDP is great for doing jobs like renaming a batch of files, but it knows when you are not actually downloading from a camera.

[lawsonblack]

Clive-
Thanks for the reply. I thought of this and tested with a card reader but decided to test again after reading your reply. I used a CF card from a camera with a dozen or so pictures in a SanDisc card reader and repeated the test. Once again, I couldn't get any info to transfer into the IPTC fields on the downloaded files.

In both this test and my previous tests from a directory on a hard drive, DL Pro can extract the filename using {o} in the download filename. In the case of origin files on a card, it uses the camera assigned filename in the destination file. In the case of original files on a hard drive, I renamed the files and DL Pro picked up and used the windows filename in the destination file. In both of these cases, the destination filename looked like this:
20071101_110103_originalname.jpg

I'm still lost.

Bill

[DavidB]

... I have not been able to place info into the IPTC fields. For the test I tried token {o} for the filename in the Author field and my name in the copyright notice field thru Edit>IPTC/XMP. I also checked 'Add IPTC/XMP to data to downloaded images' box in General Preferences although I'm not sure if this is necessary. Anyway, I checked the downloaded images afterwards with both Irfanview and Exifer and found nothing had been added. Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong?

Bill

You don't seem to be doing anything wrong in DL Pro. However, there may be problems with your testing.

DL Pro uses the current (XMP) standard of IPTC data. Exifer (which I don't use) has not, according to its website, been updated since 2002, so I guess that it still uses the older (IIM) standard for IPTC. Unfortunately, XMP represents a whole different way of doing things from IIM, and even the data structure is not a superset of IIM, so that the mapping from IIM to XMP is only partial. Add to this the fact that applications do not always give the fields the same names that the IPTC gives them, and you can see that discovering whether the data is or is not in the image is not as straightforward as you might have thought.

As regards IrfanView, I am not sure what IPTC standard it uses, but it does not appear to show the 'Author' field in its IPTC data display.

All of this inclines me to the view that DL Pro has worked as advertised on your downloaded images, as it certainly does on mine. The best test is, I suggest, to download DL Pro's sibling, BreezeBrowser Pro, and install it on a trial basis. In any of the views in BB Pro, you can right-click on an image and select 'Image properties', and this will bring up tabbed lists of the EXIF and IPTC data.

As a more recently updated alternative to Exifer, you could use Phil Harvey's freeware ExifTool (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/). This command prompt based tool can be downloaded, unzipped and used without requiring any other installation. The interface is not elegant, but the drag and drop variant is a very good way to see a complete listing of the metadata in your image. I think that ExifTool calls the Author field 'Creator'.

Hope this helps. Please let us know whether you found your test data.

David

[lawsonblack]

DavidB,

Woohoo - success! As you suspected, the data was there all of the time. I downloaded BBP on a trial basis and immediately found the data from all of the tests I had done. So DLP inserts the filename from the {o} token and text data regardless of whether the source file as on a card reader or on a windows hard drive. Thanks very much for the help.

I also used the plugin to convert the resolution to 300 and that worked perfectly. I don't know why camera makers (at least the models I use) don't let us adjust that in a setup menu. This item will save me a lot of time as the first thing I almost always do when editing a photo in Paint Shop Pro is to change this from 180 to 300.

Thanks again,

Bill

[DavidB]

So DLP inserts the file name from the {o} token and text data regardless of whether the source file as on a card reader or on a windows hard drive.
As far as I know the IPTC data components of DL Pro, including the tokens, work in the same way whatever the source is. 'Download from a folder' is useful on occasions, but I find that it is no substitute for the more comprehensive IPTC data input facilities in BB Pro. Anyway, I'm glad it worked.


I also used the plugin to convert the resolution to 300 and that worked perfectly. I don't know why camera makers (at least the models I use) don't let us adjust that in a setup menu. This item will save me a lot of time as the first thing I almost always do when editing a photo in Paint Shop Pro is to change this from 180 to 300.
I find the whole dpi thing very confusing. Personally, I prefer to work in pixel sizes throughout the workflow, so that, when it comes to making a print, the dpi I am using becomes a matter of judgement rather than a fixed value, that is part of the whole process of trading off conflicting priorities to get the optimum result.