threedeers Loc: Northern Illinois

I am helping a friend sort and scan about 2000 slides dating back to 1955 to 1980 that his father took. Aside from getting them in digital form he would like to capture and display notes about the scene (people and places) when they are viewed on a computer or TV. In my opinion the best place to put the information is in the Exif data then it will be forever with the photo. I know of know way of displaying the Exif information on the screen the same time as the image. Other than that, we could use PowerPoint or a similar program putting the notes on the same power point slide. The problem is he wants these to be shared with the family and to be long lasting so putting the information in another program that may not be here in 20 years or so does not seem to be the best way to go.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks
Craig

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

How computer "strong" are you? A free tool I've used is based on a command-line utility called EXIFTOOL. It's documented like a Unix utility ... as in: not very much and you have to be creative in thinking about what it can do and then reading the limited documentation to find the arguments needed to perform an update action on an image file. That said: you can access and add any EXIF value available. Image creation dates and keywords would seem the most applicable to the need you've described. I've used EXIFTOOL to add camera, film and lens information to scanned images from film similar to your scanning effort.

I believe there's software with a GUI interface that can be purchased. They may or may not be more useful. Hopefully, others with experience with these tools can add their input.

threedeers Loc: Northern Illinois

Thanks, I have been messing around with computers since DOS 3.0 so I can get around OK. I will look into Exiftool.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

I use Exiftool extensively; however, I use it on Linux systems in Bash scripts so only the actual Exiftool commands and options would be the same, but not the interaction between it and other programs.

Your best bet is to insert your information into either the Exif "User Comment" record or the JPEG file "Comment" record. Note that Exif also provides an tag called "Image Description".

Interesting things happen when an image is converted from one file format to another. Converting to a TIFF format will lose the Exif records from a JPEG file, but the JPEG file tag called "Comments" is converted to the Exif "Image Description" record. If a JPEG is converted to a PNG all three tags are preserved.

It would appear that perhaps using the Comment record in the JPEG format would be the best place to put your information about the image. Here is the command to do that:

>exiftool -comment="This is the comment text that will be saved to the image file." image.jpg

To read that information back,

>exiftool -s -s -comment image.jpg
Comment: This is the comment text that will be saved to the image file.

The two -s options shorten up the output line by removing extra white space.

threedeers Loc: Northern Illinois

[quote=Apaflo]I use Exiftool extensively; however, I use it on Linux systems in Bash scripts so only the actual Exiftool commands and options would be the same, but not the interaction between it and other programs.

Thanks Apaflo

I will start to see what I can come up with. This certainly is a good start!

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

You can try Exif Pilot.
http://www.colorpilot.com/exif.html

Windows Explorer
https://www.labnol.org/software/exif-data-editors/14210/

Three more -
https://www.geckoandfly.com/7987/how-to-change-exif-data-date-and-camera-properties-with-free-editor/

threedeers Loc: Northern Illinois

[quote=jerryc41]You can try Exif Pilot.

Thanks Jerry,
I will look in to these. We have just started the project so I have some time to find the best (easiest) way of doing this.

I have always appreciated your contributions.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

When I right click on a photo one ExIF option is "copy"

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

[quote=threedeers]

Thanks.

big-guy Loc: Peterborough Ontario Canada

This is a 2 problem question. 1. add info to metadata. 2. present a slide show that shows this information.

Lightroom will do both for you very easily.
1. In Library module choose the Metadata section on the right and place information in the title, caption, keyword or other text fields. Then choose all files and put them in a collection which will make life much easier.
2. In Slide Show module click on the new collection. Choose all the basics for your slide show then click on the overlays section on the right. Tick the Text Overlays then on the tool bar under your photo click on the ABC tool. A place to type some text appears as well as a tab with up/down arrows that defaults to "Custom Text" simply click the up/down arrow and choose Title or Caption depending on which you chose to use. I prefer to use both using Title as a short description and caption for longer text. A new text overlay will show on your screen that you can move and size as you desire. Me I put the Title at the top center and the Caption at the bottom center. As you move these boxes you will notice that right, center and left placeholders will anchor to these locations giving you a good idea as to where center is etc. Once finished with Caption, click on the photo itself to un-highlight the caption text box and re-click the ABC tool and then click the up/down arrow and choose the Title option. Repeat the procedure above. As an alternative instead of choosing a predefined field you can choose the edit option at the list bottom and create your own single or combination text fields and when finished, in the Text Template Editor choose the top Preset down arrow and create a new preset named as you see fit. One caveat is the the text will only show on one line so writing a novel is probably not a good idea. Your text box should be configured for your longest text line so all others fit within those parameters. ike Twitter, keep it short and succinct.

Preview your slide show and if it's OK choose the Export Video on the left module. Name it and note the location it is saved.

threedeers Loc: Northern Illinois

[quote=big-guy]This is a 2 problem question. 1. add info to metadata. 2. present a slide show that shows this information.

Lightroom will do both for you very easily. ............


Thanks big guy,

I do not have Lightroom but have a friend that uses it so I will take your advise with his coaching.

I think to get the project going we are going to import the images into Power Point, adding a caption, copy- paste that caption to the metadata file, when done save it to a .pps file. The .pps file can be viewed by anyone (no need to have Power Point) but we will have the information in the metadata and then can try to extract that later on. The project got moved up this weekend so I have to get moving faster that I wanted but at least we will get the information stored on the image file.

By the way, have a friend in Sarnia, ON love the area (Blue Water Bridge(s) and up to Tobermory. He has kids in the Toronto area.

DJphoto Loc: SF Bay Area

Another option that I use to post my PowerPoint lecture slides for my students is to save the .ppt file as a .pdf file, which I suspect will be supported for "forever."

threedeers Loc: Northern Illinois

Thanks DJ.

Good idea and simple to do.