Mass-add metadata to JPGs / annotate with alternative descriptions, copyright etc

annotate-jpg.sh

#!/bin/bash
## libraries: sed, exiftool
# sudo apt-get install sed libimage-exiftool-perl
## if output folder is needed
# [ -d output-folder ] || mkdir output-folder # checks if output folder exists, and create if not
i=0 # to track iteration cycle for lookup by row in text file with sed
## for each JPG
for filename in source-folder/*.jpg; do
    ((i++))
    ## lookup row i in text file
    desc="$(echo "$output" | sed "${i}q;d" alt.txt)" # capture sed output in ${desc}
    # echo "${desc}"
    [ -e "$filename" ] || continue # escape if no file
    # echo "${i} - ${filename%.*} - ${desc}" # ${filename%.*} prints filename without extension
    exiftool -mwg:copyright="CC-BY-SA 4.0" -mwg:keywords="Keyword1; Keyword2;" -mwg:description="${desc}" -xmp:title="Title" -iptc:ObjectName="Title" -mwg:creator="Author / Owner" -overwr

Task Description

mass-annotate a folder of JPG image files with alternative descriptions, license etc. from a text-file

Approach

• iterate over set (folder) of JPG files
• for each file
  • track current iteration number in var ${i}
  • extract description ${desc} from file alt.txt, in row ${i}
  • with exiftool add metadata (description, copyright, title, author)

Prerequisites

• folder of JPG files
• text file .txt with
  • 1 description for each image per line
  • in the same (!) order as the files

Need more Tags?

You can lookup the supported universal MWG tags as well as the specific metadata standards (i.e. Exif, IPTC, XMP) here

TODO

• add workflow for PNGs (semi-straightforward support for Exif exists)
• add workflow for splitting title and description from alt.txt (or simply work with two files)