20 comments

  1. Ale says:

    Hi, i’m tring to replace Lightroom with XnviewMp, but i really don’t understand which field in Xnview i have to fill for the title.
    In LR there is a Title field, but in xnview?
    Thanks!!

    Ale

  2. Ale S. says:

    Hi,
    is there a way… or better… what is the best way to add a Title to a photo with xnviewmp? In the past i’ve used only Lightroom and in LR there is a “Title”..but i don’t find anything similar in xnview.
    Thanks,
    Ale

    • Carl Seibert says:

      The Object Name field (Title – same field by a different name) is in the Source tab in XnView’s IPTC editor dialog.

      Different software puts fields in different sections in the interface (Photo Mechanic puts this field under Status, for example.) And different programs refer to given fields using different names, sometimes names that are officially recognized in the standard and sometimes not. This one can be “Object Name”, or “Title”. (or “Title/Object Name”, for that matter) Either is okey-dokey according to the standard. The caption is officially “Description/Caption”. I can’t even count all the different names applied to the Byline/Author/Creator/Photographer field.

      Sometimes the different names make sense for different user groups. Sometimes I think developers go around renaming stuff just for the sport of it 🙂

  3. Jeremy says:

    Hi Carl,

    Thanks for the clear explanation ! Metadata is a very valuable crusade.

    But is there a simple way to batch export my EXISTING db categories to the files’ metadata ?
    I want to migrate a collection of pictures to Synology Photo Station, and still access there as keywords the DB categories I used to define in XnView. There are thousand of files, so editing manually IPTC for each picture is hardly an option.
    I couldn’t find any option for that in the batch export tool as now.

    • Carl Seibert says:

      Hi Jeremy,

      I’m sorry I haven’t replied sooner. I somehow missed your comment in the queue.

      I just went through the XnView changelogs back to 2014 and I didn’t find any mention of Pierre adding the feature that you (and several others) want to do that. That feature has been requested for years now.

      -Carl

  4. Carl Seibert says:

    Our comments function misbehaved for reader Bo De Lang, who has found a solution to Jeremy’s problem. I’ll paste in his findings here.

    Without further ado, over to Bo:

    I’m happy to report that I do have a way in which this can be achieved using XnViewMP.

    1) set the categories for the image
    2) in Preferences|Browser|Metadata|IPTC&XMP under Keywords tick Export DB category to XMP Subject and IPTC Keyword. Tick either one or both of the subheadings. Tick Write hierarchical keywords if appropriate.
    3) with the images to be updated selected in the Browser, choose View|Update files from catalog

    The image(s) now have the XnView categories written as XMP (hierarchical) Subjects and XMP keywords

    – Bo De Lang

  5. Carl Jones says:

    Edit Metadata allows you to select such things as filename to be inserted in a metadata field, e.g. Captiion.
    This is fine on a one-at-a-time usage.
    But if you select multiple photos and use the Insert Filename option for the caption, *all* photos get the filename of the *first* file as their caption.
    I certainly expected this to occur *for each file*.
    It seems that the Edit Metadata is just a batch write operation through the set of files.
    In every case (metadata field) for which I can pick a ‘file value’ (filename, folder, date, etc), I’d like it done on a file-by-file basis!
    Is there a way to do this that I am missing?
    Win 10 XnView Version 0.96.4 64bits (Jun 30 2020)

  6. Carl Jones says:

    I “found” this again, and it was still useful the second time around.
    Because I think it is good for people who need help in this area, and because I think (that you think) that XnView is a good program, I’d like to suggest that you re-visit the current metadata support and update this blog/page. The editor templates can get data from other fields automatically, and there is a batch (Metadata) Transfer feature which allows copying of data values from one field to another. Very useful! (and I have no relationship to XnView).

    • Carl Seibert says:

      Yes, it’s been a while. A bit of an update might be in order. The Metadata > Transfer function is new. Variables have been in the program for quite a while. I think I mention variables in one of the videos. I’ll have to take a tour and see what sort of new stuff I find. I guess I’ve been waiting for the great and glorious day when Pierre finally supports the rest of the Core Schema fields. (Or the fields for Google Licenbsable) I don’t see any sign of that happening, so I should take a look at what is actually there now. Thanks for reading!

  7. David says:

    Hi Carl, in the latest version of XnView MP the CTRL+I command does not bring up the Edit IPTC-IM/XMP editor, it brings up an Edit IPTC-IM editor instead. In the Tools > Metadata menu there are now two options, Edit IPTC and Edit XMP but no Edit IPTC-IM/XMP option. Is there still a way to edit IPTC and XMP at the same time and if there is how do we enable it? If there isn’t what would you recommend? Should we use IPTC or XMP or should we use a different software program that allows editing both instead?

    • Carl Seibert says:

      Hi David, This is strange. When I do command or control – i (Version 0.98.4, both Mac and Windows platforms), the dialog is indeed labeled “Edit IPTC – IIM”. But when I make an edit in the dialog, it’s written to both data blocks. As before. And as it’s supposed to be. So, OK, just an incorrect label.

      When I go to the inexplicable “Edit XMP” dialog from Tools > Metadata, (I mean seriously, what the entire heck is this supposed to be for?) I can make an edit and nothing happens except that in the dialog it looks like I have made an edit. Nothing is actually written to the XMP data block. If I make an edit in Tools > Metadata > Edit IPTC, it brings up the normal IPTC editor, the same as Command – I. And an edit made here appears correctly in both data blocks.

      In Preferences, I have ticked the boxes for writing both IIM and XMP, as well as the box for writing a .xmp file if one is needed. All of which is normal. I can’t remember if it’s the default, but it’s as it should be.

      On my Windows machine, for some reason, the tickbox for writing to the IIM was not ticked. Same with the tickbox for writing the .xmp sidecar. The write IIM tickbox wasn’t active. I couldn’t tick it until I turned on the preference to write the .xmp sidecar. (What the heck does the .xmp sidecar have to do with writing to the IIM?) This isn’t really harmful because I can’t imagine not having all three tickboxes turned on. But it sure is weird.

      So, yes, you can use XnView as normal, despite the mislabeled dialog. Tools > Metadata > Edit XMP doesn’t need to exist, IMHO. It’s buggy, and even if it was working correctly, I would be afraid that it might cause harm. Could you go over to the XnView forums and let Pierre know what you’ve found? – Carl

  8. Michael Hodish says:

    Carl, I know this is an old thread; I hope you see this.

    Is there a way to get XnView to digest the latitude and longitude from the exif data, and come up with a place name, which it inserts into the caption, all automatically?

    If not, do you know of any other software that does this, for Windows?

    Thanks,

    Mike Hodish

    • Carl Seibert says:

      No, XnView won’t do reverse geotagging.

      Photo Mechanic will. To put the geotag information in the caption will be a two step process. (Assuming your images already have GPS information.)

      In Photo Mechanic – First, select the images you want to reverse geotag. Go to Tools> Reverse Geocode. Select the fields you want resolved. Then “OK” and your image(s) will have the fields you selected filled from the results of a GPS lookup.

      Then, you can use the Template Editor to copy the fields you want to the caption. You’ll use variables. Clear the template. For the caption, choose to append, overwrite, or prepend. (Put the results of the operation in front of, behind, or overwrite whatever happens to be in the caption, in other words.) Add the variable for the field you want – in your case, I assume Location – and any text you want in the caption field, and apply to selected. So, in the Template Editor, you might end up with something that looks like “This happened at {location}, in {city}, {state}.” Which would add something like “this happened at City Hall in Los Angeles, California.” at the end of your caption, if that’s what the Location, City and State/Province fields for that particular picture contained.

      Note that the Location field (and for that matter the City field) are a bit tricky, depending on the place in question. Location will often resolve to the name of a street, or sometimes to a well-known place, like a stadium, or city hall, or my favorite raw bar. Just depends what’s in the database. City will be filled in properly or not, depending on what country and state or region you might be in. Photo Mechanic uses Open Streetmaps. They’ve tried to be clever in their code to make the city come out right, but there’s a limit to what can be accomplished with some logic statements when you’re dealing with a whole world of different ways to express the concepts of “city”, or “village”, or “neighborhood”. Location is just down to what some volunteer did or didn’t add to the database.

      If you need to add GPS data to your images, you can add it, either one image at a time, or by importing a .gpx track file to do a whole batch.

      Lightroom Classic will also reverse geocode your pictures, but it lacks the variables functionality that you need if you want to copy the resulting information to another field.

      I have some videos that explain the reverse geocoding process and using variables in Photo Mechanic. I am working on a set of videos about working with GPS data specifically. (If I ever get un-busy enough to get them finished.) metadatamatters.blog/youtube

      I hope this helps.

  9. Michael Hodish says:

    Carl, Thanks for the thorough reply. Is there a way to set this up so it automatically happens for photos that are added in the future?

    • Carl Seibert says:

      Yes, as it turns out. Just make a template that enables reverse geocoding and uses variables to copy whatever you want to the caption and apply it automatically at ingest or when you copy your files from the camera cards. Or, for that matter, just by applying the template by whatever means.

      Usually, you can’t automatically fill a field and then copy it using variables in one go. I went back and checked this use case. Indeed, you can use reverse geocoding to fill the location fields and then copy the results with one template. So, woo hoo, you’re good to go. You probably will find that doing reverse geocoding on ingest will slow down your ingest. Photo Mechanic has to phone home to its servers, which in turn have to query the Open Streetmaps database. That can’t make things any quicker.

      (Ingest is just a fancy way to copy files from one place to another and do stuff like applying templates, making backup copies, or incrementally copying only new files from a card. It is not importing images into a database like Lightroom. However, you can apply a template on most any file operation, like an ordinary copy.)

  10. Michael Hosiah says:

    That’s great info. The speed is not essential for me. I do this as a hobby. If I have a massive pile of images from a trip, for example, I am perfectly happy if ingestion and reverse geotagging takes overnight. I am not on a deadline!

    Thanks so much for your advice. I will trial Photomechanic now.

    Mike

Leave a Reply to Carl Seibert Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.