metadatawrangler-20100205.59.zip
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My “Metadata Wrangler” plugin filter for Lightroom 2 or later allows you to strip selected metadata components from images as they are exported. You can use it, for example, to remove the embedded thumbnail and any Lightroom “develop” metadata, while retaining other metadata, such as the exposure settings, lens information, copyright, etc.
Links for download and install instructions are at right; continue reading below for a description of the plugin's features.
(Note: Please see the known issues before reporting bugs.)
Overview
Here's a screenshot showing the options and features of the Metadata Wrangler as it appears in the Export Dialog, as of its initial public release:
What metadata you choose to strip – and to leave intact – can vary greatly depending on your intended use. For example, it makes sense to strip at least the embedded thumbnail from small exports that are themselves intended to be used as thumbnails. In such a case, it may well make sense to strip everything but copyright information, to keep the file size small.
On the other hand, it may well make sense to preserve most metadata on images intended for upload to a photo-sharing site, yet remove the embedded thumbnail that does little but increase the file size (and hence the file-upload time).
In any case, only the exported copy of the image is affected; both the original image and the Lightroom library are never changed by this plugin.
It's a “Filter”
I call the Metadata Wrangler an “export filter”, but in the official Lightroom vernacular, it's a “post-process action”. The point is that unlike a full export plugin (such as my “Export to Flickr” plugin), this filter (post-process action) can be used with any export from Lightroom. It can be used in conjunction with the standard “Files on Disk” export, in conjunction with one of my other plugins (e.g. “Export to Zenfolio”, “Export to PicasaWeb”), or any other third-party export plugin.
Metadata Can Be a Bit Tricky
I don't know that there's a good reason for it, but it's turned out that image-file metadata formats have grown into somewhat of a mess. Luckily, Phil Harvey has created the most excellent exiftool library that makes this plugin's work much easier. It's the same metadata-handling library used for the back end of my online Exif viewer. I pass along half of any gifts I receive in relation to this plugin to Phil.
Nevertheless, some of the “metadata mess” remains exposed to you, the user, as evidenced by the mishmash of XMP blocks. Here's part of the Metadata Wrangler in Lightroom's export dialog dealing with XMP blocks....
You can have all XMP data preserved or stripped by clicking on the “preserve” or “remove” next to the “XMP Blocks” label at the top, but if you want to be selective, you may have to do some research to see in which block or blocks the data you're interested in lies. It's a bit cryptic for the non-engineer, but the XMP-block info at the exiftool site lists exactly what fields are in each block. (The “XMP Info” button in the dialog links to that page as well.)
Two of the XMP blocks are fairly straightforward. The XMP “crs” block contains all the information about Lightroom develop adjustments (crop, exposure, localized corrections, etc.). You'll want to strip this block if you want to hide – or just don't feel the need to include with the image – all the develop changes you've made to an image.
The XMP “exif” block contains a repeat of most of the Exif data represented individually lower in the dialog. I'm not sure that there's 100% coverage, but I generally strip it unless I intend the exported image to be for some kind of archive.
Presets
The Metadata Wrangler supports its own preset mechanism. The dropdown near the top of the Metadata Wrangler export-dialog section allows you to create and recall presets of exclude/preserve decisions:
“Preserve Metadata” and “Remove Metadata” are standard presets that adjust the settings to save/remove all metadata. You can create a new preset by making some change to the dialog settings, then choose “save current settings as a preset”.
The current settings for the Metadata Wrangler are also part of any Lightroom Export Preset that you create while the Metadata Wrangler is installed and enabled. Note that the individual settings are saved to the Lightroom export preset, rather than any Metadata Wrangler preset name that might be in effect. This means that if you create a Lightroom Export Preset and then later change the meaning of a Metadata Wrangler preset, that change is not reflected back into the Lightroom Export Preset. (This paragraph is a bit confusing, sorry.)
Metadata Not Explicitly Listed...
The bottom of the dialog section includes a catch-all item that governs how the whole plugin approaches its work:
When “Remove” is selected here, all metadata is removed, and then only items explicitly listed as “Preserve” elsewhere in the dialog are added back. Conversely, when “Preserve” is selected, the items explicitly listed as “Remove” are manually removed from the exported image.
I believe that the end result is always the same – that all metadata that could be in the image is listed earlier in the dialog – but I've included this option as a “just in case”. When I'm exporting small images for use as thumbnails on my site, for example, I strip everything except what I explicitly want to keep: the ICC Color profile, and the copyright/artist information.
Availability
This plugin is distributed as “donationware”. I wrote it and make it available for free — everyone can use it forever, without cost of any kind — but unless registered, its functionality is somewhat reduced after six weeks. Registration costs the minimum 1-cent PayPal fee; any additional donation you'd like to make in encouragement or thanks is optional and completely up to you. For details, see my blog post titled Lightroom Plugin Development: Now With Added Encouragement.
Lightroom 3 — Registrations in Lightroom 2.x will not carry over to Lightroom 3 when it is released, so plan that you'll have to re-register if you upgrade to Lightroom 3. (That's for the real Lightroom 3.... registration is not required in the Lightroom 3 Public Beta, but be warned that plugin support is spotty and plugins may not work well there.)
As I mentioned above, because this plugin relies so heavily on the exiftool library, I have decided to pass along half of any donations I receive for this plugin to the exiftool library's author. So, if you choose to send a gift when you register, a big thanks from Phil, too.
( Update Log via RSS )| 20100205.59 | I didn't like how the special keyword stuff I added a few versions ago felt, so I redid it from scratch, and added the ability to strip or preserve specific keywords (and/or keywords matching filename-like patterns). I also added the ability to remove keyword prefixes or suffixes, thinking that it might be useful. For example, you might have a set of keywords for one stock agency, e.g. agency1-flower, agency1-dog, and another set for another (agency1-rose, agency1-happy dog, and use the new functionality on export for the first agency by stripping all keywords other than ones that match agency1-*, and then removing the agency- prefix. Personally, I don't use keywords, so I don't know whether any of this is actually useful. Let me know. Warning: when hierarchical keywording is enabled (in the standard export-dialog “Metadata” section), I'm not exactly sure what semantics would make most sense for the keyword filtering and prefix/suffix removal features, so whatever it does in this version is likely not useful, and likely to change in a future version. If you use hierarchical keywords a lot and have thoughts about how this would work best, please drop me an email. |
| 20100205.58 | oops |
| 20100201.57 | Added an option to have the plugin ignore output files that are not JPEG (such as when you export to DNG, or export a raw file with a file-settings format of "Original". |
| 20100201.56 | Added new special-case handling for keywords. Keywords can be embedded in three different metadata blocks, and if you merely want to suppress keywords for a particular export, deleting all three blocks can be more than you want, so a new tri-state option for keywords, toward the bottom of the list, has been added. By default it's set to do nothing, but you can set it to explicitly preserve or remove the keywords in all their forms. It seems to be working, but do give it a test to be sure. Completely changed how the one-click upgrade applies the newly-downloaded zip file, in the hopes that it'll work for more people. Rather than unzipping over the old copy, it now unzips to a temporary folder, then moves the old folder out of the way and the new folder into place. Prior versions' folders are now maintained (with the version number in the folder) in case you want to revert a version; you may want to clear them out from time to time. Of course, it won't take affect until you try to upgrade after having upgraded to or beyond this version. |
| 20091205.55 | Minor internal debugging tweaks. |
| 20091022.54 | Added a first draft of some rudimentary support for Lightroom 3 Beta. See this important note about plugin support in Lightroom 3 Beta and Lightroom 3, including future plans for features and my registration system. |
| 20090903.53 | I'm back from a long trip and starting up the plugin machinery again. This version adds the "lr" XMP section (which is the "keywords as Lightroom hierarchy", if you enable that in the "Metadata" section), and fixes a crash that some Windows users ran into when the combination of selected items could sometimes create a command line longer than Windows could handle. |
| 20090701.52 | Upgrading the built-in version of ExifTool to include support for DNG 1.3, required to work with for DNGs made with Lightroom 1.4. Enhanced the one-click upgrade stuff quite a bit, now detecting ahead of time when it will fail because the plugin is installed where Lightroom can't write (if Lightroom can't write to it, it can't update itself). I also added a progress bar, and now download in smaller chunks to avoid 'out of memory' errors on the larger plugins. Do remember that this new functionality becomes available after you upgrade to or past this version, when you then upgrade with it. |
| 20090521.51 | Fixed a "loadstring" error some users got. |
| 20090510.50 | Added a link in the Plugin Manager to the plugin's update-log RSS feed. |
| 20090507.49 | Added an option to "remove Exif items with prejudice". When enabled, marking an Exif item for removal also removes the item from other places it might be found, including the XMP "exif" block, inside an embedded thumbnail (which is unlikely, but possible in some strange cases where you're exporting an original that was originally imported with a metadata-laden thumbnail), etc. Added remove/preserve buttons to the overall "Individual Exif Items" header. Made the "Set the exported image file's modification date to the image date" option part of the preset state (so that it's value is saved and restored along with all the other settings). |
| 20090425.48 | Tweaked how the plugin tries to update itself during the one-click upgrade process, to hopefully get things working for those few Windows users that have never had it work. Crossing fingers. We'll see. |
| 20090423.47 | Changed the way files are updated, to avoid a potential problem (not yet actually seen) when exporting huge 100MB+ files. Also added a boatload of verbose debugging when the "extended logging" is checked in the Plugin Manager. |
| 20090314.45 | As requested, there's now an option to set the file date of each exported image file to the image date. If the image has "shadow GPS data" (from my geoencoding-support plugin) that includes a date, then that's used because it'll be the most accurate, having come from a GPS tracklog. Otherwise, the DateTimeOriginal or DateTimeDigitized metadata value is used. |
| 20090313.44 | It seems that PayPal doesn't give everyone a "Unique Transaction ID" in the registration confirmation mail; some people get a "Receipt Number". So, the registration dialog now accepts that as well. |
| 20090228.43 | Fixed a bug that caused a plugin crash if my server couldn't be reached during registration. |
| 20090223.42 | A little boo-boo in the previous version would make it look like unregistered versions couldn't even work for less than 10 photos after the trial period. It would work, but told you it wouldn't. Fixed in this version. |
| 20090222.41 | NOTE: you may need to restart Lightroom after installing to this (or a later) version from the previous (or an earlier) version. Please try a restart if you get an error the first time you try to use the plugin. As per the ongoing discussion on my blog, with this version this plugin moves over to
a "donationware" model, in which the plugin remains free, but registration eventually becomes
required (and an eventual donation hoped for For details, see Lightroom Plugin Development: Now With Added Encouragement. (For info about what drove this decision, see What To Do When a Hobby Becomes Work?) The plugin no longer expires, and correspondingly, I will not pay much attention to reports of bugs that have already been fixed, so please check your version and the version history before submitting bugs or feature requests. There was a lot of internal upheaval in the code, so I expect that some boo-boos my surface. If something breaks for you with this version, please let me know, but until I fix it, feel free to revert to the previous version. One bug fix in this release: I fixed, I think, the inability to write data to images whose filenames have non-ASCII characters. Working on this bug is a perfect example of why I'm moving to a donationware model: this non-ASCII-filename situation doesn't impact me, personally, but I spent 8+ hours today tracking down the problem (Windows is horrid) and MacGyvering a solution. I hope it works for everyone. |
| 20090129.40 | More debugging for an edge-case error one user is getting. |
| 20090128.39 | Small housekeeping update for the new locales supported by Lightroom 2.3. |
| 20090121.38 | The metadata wrangler doesn't seem to work on Windows when the destination images are written to a \\hostname share, so I now disable the export if it detects this situation. If you map the share to a local drive letter, it should be able to work. If anyone knows why cygwin Perl can't access a filename like "\\host\path\file.jpg", please let me know. |
| 20090116.37 | It turns out that the automatic upgrade stuff doesn't work if the plugin folder has been renamed from its original. That should generally not happen, but it's possible, so the plugin now checks its own location reports the issue to the user if it finds it. |
| 20090115.36 | Added more debugging-log stuff to the 'Upgrade Now' button action, to try to understand why it doesn't work for some people. |
| 20090110.35 | Added a checkbox in the Plugin Manager to turn on enhanced debugging (more stuff in the plugin's debugging log), and added a button in the same place that sends your log to me. Particularly for “the upgrade button doesn't work” and “error while uploading” type issues, this should be useful for debugging. |
| 20090107.34 | Updated the ExifTool install that the plugin uses to Version 7.60, which corrects some problems that a few plugin users were seeing while working with certain Canon image files. |
| 20081221.33 | A message was not reporting the proper data on certain kinds of errors. |
| 20081210.32 | Things seem to have settled down, so pushing back the expiration for several months... |
| 20081124.31 | Perhaps fixed a problem whereby the "Upgrade Now" button didn't work for some Windows users. We'll see whether it works when those users upgrade from this version to whatever version is next. |
| 20081122.30 | No problems from the upheaval recently, so pushing back the expiration a bit. |
| 20081121.29 | Try#3 at this fix. Perhaps I shouldn't be programming when I have a cold.... |
| 20081120.28 | Grrr, build problem held back the fix in .27. This should actually have the fix this time. |
| 20081120.27 | Fixes the Undefined subroutine &Digest::MD5::md5 error that some people are seeing. |
| 20081119.26 | Added some more logging to help debug the Undefined subroutine &Digest::MD5::md5 error that some people are seeing. |
| 20081117.25 | No new functionality in this version, but a huge upheaval in the underlying code to repair an unfortunate design choice I made early on in the development that had limiting consequences I'd not foreseen. There are likely bugs introduced in this version, and as such, it has a short expiration date to encourage updates as those bugs are reported and fixed. If you do run into an error, please send (via email) the log referenced in the upper-right of the Plugin Manager. Thanks. |
| 20081113.24 | Added "enabled" to the status line when it's enabled, just to be clear. Attempted to address a problem that I didn't think could happen, but apparently has. |
| 20081031.23 | Fixed a but wherein keywords were getting flattened in some situations. |
| 20081030.22 | Added a bit of logging to try to track down a problem. |
| 20081004.21 | Fixed a situation that might have caused trouble when running two exports in tandem. |
| 20080923.20 | Sigh, just realized that the "check for new version" stuff did break in 2.1. Totally my fault, sorry. Fixed. |
| 20080923.19 | Arrrgh, my plugin build system has been broken since returning to Kyoto two weeks ago, thereby causing new installs of this plugin to not work. Sorry! Should be fixed now. |
| 20080916.18 | Finally have the upgrade button working on both Win and Mac. Since I returned home last week, I now have access to both kinds of machine for the first time since LR2 was released. I can sum up the 5 hours I spent wrestling with the unzip code in three word: I hate Windows. Microsoft owes me five hours of my life back. Note that you may have to install this one by hand in order to get the newly working upgrade button... it's the next upgrade that should be easy-as-click. |
| 20080831.17 | Handle a race condition in the upgrade logic that sometimes results in a superfluous "You have version XYZ, but version XYZ is now available" message |
| 20080831.16 | Made the switch among presets a bit more efficient, and perhaps fixed a bug related to the preset name not updating in response to changes made in the various
selections when switching among Lightroom export presets. (I say perhaps because I could no longer replicate the bug I thought I was seeing, but I don't
think I changed anything that would have fixed it, so maybe there really was no bug in the first place? I dunno. In any case, it's fixed.  )
|
| 20080828.15 | Minor tweaks |
| 20080828.14 | A few more tweaks to report a failed upgrade attempt a bit more clearly |
| 20080828.13 | When upgrading, ignore a status of “50” (which means “out of disk space”) from the unzip the plugin performs. It seems Windows often reports this status even when there's plenty of disk space left, so until I can understand it better, I'll just ignore that code. |
| 20080817.12 | Lots of little tweaks as I cleaned things up. Added a bunch of stuff to the Plugin Manager, including a “What's New” button that shows up next to the “Upgrade Now” button when a new version is available. |
| 20080814.11 | Fixed infinite cycle of 'assert' messages one might get in odd situations |
| 20080811.10 | Moved and renamed the debugging logs to a temporary folder, and added log Show/Delete buttons to the plugin's custom section of the Plugin Manager. |
| 20080808.9 | Fixed the "LrShell" problem while using the one-click plugin upgrade. |
| 20080807.8 | Fixed the "strict.pm" error that Windows users were seeing. |
| 20080807.7 | Updated the plugin links to refer to the proper page, rather than my blog. |
| 20080806.6 | An attempt to fix the "Access to undefined global: quote" bug.... we'll see. |
| 20080731.5 | Fruits of the debugging... should now work for more people |
| 20080730.4 | More debugging stuff... |
| 20080730.3 | Added more debugging to the log file ("lr-plugin.log" in the Documents/MyDocuments folder) to help debug when things don't work. |
| 20080729.2 | Cosmetic change: swapped the section-heading "preserve" / "remove" buttons to match the order of the columns. |
| 20080729.1 | Initial public release |
See the known issues before reporting bugs. Also, when reporting bugs, please include the OS, the version number of Lightroom, and the version number of the plugin. Seriously. I need the full version number or I likely can't do anything but ignore the message.
Jeffrey, this looks very useful – but I do have one suggestion. The ordering of “remove and preserve” in the section headings is opposite of what it is for the detailed line items, and this seems a bit confusing in use.
Hah, didn’t even think of that. Fixed in *.2. Thanks! —Jeffrey
Hi, and again first big thanks on excellent contribution to Lightroom usability by updating the plugins.
However, it appears that with Windows there is a problem when running Metadata Wrangler plugin: is throws me a requester stating “Metadata Wrangler: error running metadata-removal command”. The folders Win and lib provbided with plugin are both empty. Should there be something, or should I download and install exiftool myself? I actually already tried it, but with no success. The exiftool.exe was loceted both in lib and Win directories.
Hello, I seem to have the same problem as XPa but under MacOS X 10.4.11…
Thanks again for these most excellent plugins, it greatly help LR2 usage. You also take very nice pictures and thanks to RSS feeds, I follow it almost everyday.
Ollivier and KPa, I’ve pushed a new version (.3) that puts a lot more into the debugging log. If it fails again, could you send the log via email? Thanks. —Jeffrey
Hello, nd a big thanks for the great lightroom-plugins.
But with the metadata wrangler plugin I get an error when activating. It says that it’s installed but it may not work.
Here I give the log-output also:
Plug-in error log for plug-in at: C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2\metadatawrangler-jfriedl.lrplugin
**** Error 1
An error occurred while attempting to run one of the plug-in’s scripts.
Access to undefined global: quote
**** Error 2
An error occurred while attempting to run one of the plug-in’s scripts.
Access to undefined global: quote
**** Error 3
Could not open dialog for plug-in.
Access to undefined global: async_version_check
Best regards,
Mark Wijnants
I think this is finally fixed in .6 —Jeffrey
Looks superb, Jeffrey, bravo. A question though – does the post processing step mean that Windows users will have to be careful with the length of their file paths when they run large exports?
I don’t think that really matters. Each image is handled in turn, the lengths don’t accumulate. —Jeffrey
Not to beat a dead horse, but I’m getting the exact same issue as the last 2 folks – I’m running LR2 on XP.
Thanks so much for the good stuff -
Finally fixed, I think, in .6 —Jeffrey
I also have the same problem to report using the latest Lightroon 2 commercial and 20080731.5
If I can give any info to help then please let me know.
John.
Hi Jeffrey,
I am getting the same diagnostic messages as above. LR2, latest Wrangler (v20080731.5), Vista 64 bit.
I am a software developer by trade. Anything I can do to help? Maybe run some lua debug code on my system and report the output?
Thanks for your fantastic plugins,
Jeffrey Hunter
Hi Jeffrey,
The new version fixed the “Access to undefined global” errors for me.
Thanks,
Jeff Hunter
Excellent, thanks for the report. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey
Plugin is just what I’m looking for……however when I export (with EXIF deselected) I get an error written:-
Execute log:
————————————————–
> Can’t locate strict.pm in …..
————————————————–
And the resulting TIFF contains EXIF data.
Details:-
WinXP
LR 2.0
Thanks in advance!
Simon Brown
I think I’ve fixed this in .8. I’ve been flying blind on the Windows changes since leaving Kyoto, but I just installed LR on my Dad’s Windows box so that I could actually test it, and it seems to work now…. —Jeffrey
Hi,
Jeffrey, please do not let this to interfere your vacation with the family. I believe that we can wait until you have enjoyed your time with the family.
That said, I’, sorry to report same problem that Jim and Simon already did (on XP SP3).
It seems that it’s not simple issue of usinf strict.pm that is not located, and when perl code is run “non strict”, bunch of other (Lua?) errors appear. Logs will be in you email.
Regards,
/KPa
20080807.8 works for me – thank you.
Hi,
Also I tested .8, and based on the few test exports with various combinations of metadata it now appears to work ok. Big thanks.
Regards,
/KPa
This looks very handy. I wonder (since the Run any command Piglet is beyond my grasp currently) if it is possible to update the metadata on export using a future version of wrangler not just preserve or remove. For example if you wanted to add IPTC Right Usage terms for a particular stock image sale but NOT change the metadata in LR catalog?
Can you please offer this for Lightroom 1.x. This is just what I need and its a shame to have it only for v2.
I’d love to, but it’d be a lot of work to retrofit into 1.x, whose plugin architecture is much more limited. —Jeffrey
Jeffrey,
I’m getting the following when attempting to use metadata wrangler:
Sigh, it turns out that I’ve had an error in my build process for the last two weeks. I just pushed .19 that should fix things. Sorry for the hassles. —Jeffrey
Hi, I tried installing this plugin, and for some reason, it is failing.
Sigh, it turns out that I’ve had an error in my build process for the last two weeks. I just pushed .19 that should fix things. Sorry for the hassles. —Jeffrey
I found the ExifTool information, and I copied this to your directories. I now no longer get any error messages in my log, but it still doesn’t work. Now it appears that nothing is happening.
I do have “Enable” checked. I am using the Preset “Preserve Metadata” with everything preserved. I also have preserve XMP blocks.
Any ideas what I should try next?
Sigh, it turns out that I’ve had an error in my build process for the last two weeks. I just pushed .19 that should fix things. Sorry for the hassles. —Jeffrey
I got it to work with 2.0 doing the following:
downloaded:
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/Image-ExifTool-7.43.tar.gz
Extracted it and copied the /lib/Files and /lib/Image folders to the plugins /lib folder.
Worked like a charm..no errors on export.
Yikes, you shouldn’t have needed to do that. It turns out that I’ve had an error in my build process for the last two weeks. I just pushed .19 that should fix things. Sorry for the hassles. —Jeffrey
I seem to be having difficulties accessing the new (.23) version.
I download and when I attempt to UnZip I get;
“Windows cannot open the folder. The compressed (zipped) folder is invalid”
Any help is appreciated.
Regards,
I’ve got a new problem with the Metadata Wrangler, version 20081210.32, on MacOS 10.4.11, with LR 2.2 build 523352 — it pops up an error dialog saying “error running metadata-removal command”. The log file says:
Running: perl -I “/Users/msirota/Desktop/Lightroom/Export Plugins/metadatawrangler-jfriedl.lrplugin/lib” “/Users/msirota/Desktop/Lightroom/Export Plugins/metadatawrangler-jfriedl.lrplugin/doit” “/Users/msirota/Pictures/Lightroom/Exports/2008-12-06/20081206-5095.jpg” -delete Photoshop:ALL ThumbnailImage PhotoshopThumbnail 1> “/var/tmp/tmp.0.AwVTnl” 2>&1
+17.6: At line 9192:
STATUS = 256
Execute log:
————————————————–
> MD5 okay
> doit: couldn’t WriteInfo(/Users/msirota/Pictures/Lightroom/Exports/2008-12-06/20081206-5095.jpg):
————————————————–
Repeat for each image file. Always line 9192 and status 256, but the “+17.6″ varies. I’m wondering if it’s just an error checking the return status, since 256 == 0 with the high bit set, but that’s just a wild guess.
Let me know if I can do more debugging for you, happy to help.
Could you consider adding a text overlay option?
My specific situation is that I am exporting to SmugMug (also applicable to Flickr and others) so that my parents can see our photos on a digital frame that is set to retrieve photos from SmugMug. For photos where they won’t be familiar with the event or venue, I would like to have the IPTC caption field overlayed on the photo. It would be great to be able to select a set of IPTC fields as a text overlay for this purpose.
Most digital frames (and their supporting websites) I have come across cannot dynamically display an IPTC field – so it is necessary to overlay it on the picture statically.
Thanks,
D.
Tim Armes’ LR/Mogrify plugin does text overlays, although I don’t know offhand whether it can pull them from the metadata. It wouldn’t hurt to check it out, and if it doesn’t do what you want, to request it.
I’m reticent to add such a feature to mine because it would require adding a huge image-processing engine to the download (two engines, actually, one for Windows and one for OSX), and also because it would step on Tim’s toes. —Jeffrey
Hey Jeffrey, if that revision comment on 20090107.34 was for the problem I reported, they were Nikon D200 files (not that it really matters…) Thanks for the fixes!
Is there any way to selectively strip or leave keywords.
For example, I often keep keywords relating to clients, or personal workflow however would like those removed if I were to export images for stock library, but leave relevant keywords in.
Within Lightroom, you can mark each keyword as do/don’t export. That should fit the bill. My plugins honor that selection. —Jeffrey
Update: as of version .56, you can now force all keywords to be stripped as a line item in the plugin. Thus, keywords that you want exported sometimes but not others, you can mark as “do export” in Lightroom, then strip them with this line item in the plugin when you need. —Jeffrey
Hi there. I know this is only peripherally related to your apparently wonderful selection of plugins, but I’m wondering if you know whether/how one can extend the set of metadata fields which Lightroom allows for annotation. They’ve got the IPTC core fields in there, but there are a lot of other fields which are potentially available within the XMP framework (e.g. the Creative Commons license fields, and the IPTC extended fields, like PersonInImage, etc. as listed on the ExifTool pages) and it seems odd to me that within a product put out by Adobe, the originators of XMP, there seems to be no option to actually take advantage of the extensibility of the metadata platform. So I’m left thinking that I just don’t understand how to use it, but I’ve been unable to find any mention of how to extend the metadata fields in the Adobe forums or documentation. Thanks for all your work.
“Within Lightroom, you can mark each keyword as do/don’t export. That should fit the bill. My plugins honor that selection.”
My first question is where are the settings to export with or without keyword tags as an “export filter”? Does Metadata Wrangler allow me to do that explicitly?
Another question is can Metadata Wrangler or any other plugin give me access to all the metadata I’ve carefully imputed (including the keyword tags) and allow me to manage it separate from an export. By “manage” I mean view and edit the metadata separate from the export process in one dialog or UI. A metadata aggregate if you will, where I can manipulate all the data (as a separate database) that I’ve spent years imputing using Lightroom but want access to for other purposes as a database outside of lightroom and the export process?
It seems that getting at all the data and metadata that Lightroom stores/collects or that I’ve imputed myself using Lightroom is driving towards a data management solution?
P.S. I’ve been working on a project for years now where trying to figure out (with an engineer) where Lightroom is actually storing metadata and data has caused lots of confusion.
Any input would be appreciated.
-Dave
Hi Jeffrey
just a question: the “Resend Metadata” in Plugin Extras/Flickr plugin will not use Metadata Wrangler, right? Any way to add an option to use it?
thank you!
Currently, “Resend Metadata” resends only tags, so there’s nothing for the Metadata Wrangler to do. As I add more things you can resend, it’ll be via checkbox, so you’ll be able to pick exactly what to resend, and as such, I don’t see how the Metadata Wrangler would fit in here… —Jeffrey
Got your Metadata Wrangler plugin installed & working, but I’m surprised that there doesn’t seem to be a way to access it from the web module in LR…?!?! Am I missing something? The images exported as part of a web page are where I really want this control over the embedded metadata.
Thanks, great plugin!
Windows XP Media Center SP2
Lightroom 2.1
Metadata Wrangler 20090228.43
It’s an Export Plugin. I’ve never really looked into the web module. I’ll check it out, but I don’t hold much hope that it’ll at all be compatible… —Jeffrey
Great Plugin. Thanks for providinig that. It saves one extra stop for me each time I export.
Do you think it would be possible to add an option to fix file date&time after export within this plugin as well.
I use exiftool to set the file date of the exported pictures to the original capture date. This to allow proper interpretion of the picture dates in e.g. other photo library programs (e.g. web library, etc.)
I do this with the following script:
What do you think?
I think that’s an excellent idea… I’ll check it out! —Jeffrey
Hi-
From San Francisco, I’m new to Lightroom. I’m trying to find a way to extract the folder path words and add them to metadata…would your plug in do that? If not, do you have a suggestion for how to do that? I need 3 levels of folder path names to get dumped into each folders metadata. (country folder/location/hotelname/hotelimage.jpg The images are named with numbers which is not helpful when I’m needing to know the name of the hotel or want to search by country or city.
Any help would be appreciated!
I’m not sure what you mean by “dumped into each folder’s metadata”. If you want to create a listing of info about images in your Lightroom catalog, you’ll probably find Tim Armes’ LR/Transporter will do the trick. If you’re looking for something else, reply by email with more details… —Jeffrey
I am using the version 20090313.44. Is there a command line command that can be used to process already exported images. I see in the postings that it can be used by Perl.
It would be really helpful, to know the command so that I can run it 0n all my previously exported JPEGs.
My requirement is to remove all the MetaData except the “Embedded ICC Color Profile”
Thanks
Chandra
Your best bet here would be to use exiftool directly, which has been designed for exactly the use you suggest. —Jeffrey
Flickr Export Plugin for Lightroom Version 20090403.89
I can’t seem to figure out how to include export items in more than one set in flickr. Am I missing something? If not, I think a lot of people do want to choose more than one set. It’s like collections in LR.
I’m really enjoying this. I didn’t think I needed this plugin and did my post-export metadata munging for flickr myself with exiftool, but I got it to see if I could control the flickr title without destroying my metadata, and see it has wonderful features I wasn’t aware of.
Thank you!
Judy
I got some problems with export to disk and this tool –
Error looks like this:
C:\Users\\Desktop\metadatawrangler-jfriedl.lrplugin\doit: couldn’t rename(C:\Users\\Desktop\output\foobar.tmp.jpg, C:\Users\\Desktop\output\foobar.jpg): Permission denied
This only happens to the first image in a batch, and doesn’t appear at all when using with export-to- plugins you developed.
Also even for the other exported images (and the *.tmp.jpg leftover), they have some weird permissions (Some S-1-121* user or the user “None”, which means it just screwed up) on them.
I tried moving the plugin directory out of desktop, it still doesn’t change. I also tried on output folder not inside my User directory, still no luck.
I suspect the problem belonging to some problems with DOS programs creating files on some Vista (or just my) machines. Here I am referring to perl.exe used in the distribution.
Since I can’t change which perl.exe it uses without mangling the directories I stop investigating here.
I’ve not had any other reports of problems like that, and it seems odd that it happens only with the first one, but not having ever used Vista, I’m unable to say with any confidence that it’s just your system. The writing is handled by exiftool, so I’ll have to ask its author about how it sets permissions and get back to you… —Jeffrey
Metadatawrangler-20090510.50
LR 2.3
Windows XP Home Edition
I get the warning:
Metadata Wrangler: error running matadata-removal command
See the log file … metadatawrangler-log.txt for details.
This happens not all the time but very often.
Can you please help me?
Thank you!
Manuela
I can’t infer much from you description; immediately after an error, please send a log via the “send to Jeffrey” button in the Plugin Manager. (By the way, that message often pops up after canceling an export…. there’s a bug in Lightroom in that it doesn’t tell the Metadata Wrangler that the export was canceled). —Jeffrey
I’m trying to strip existing keywords from photos that have been written to the metadata by photoshop elements. Do you know what, specifically, I have to strip?
The issue is that I upload files to Flickr and I’m getting keywords that aren’t listed in LR because they’re still in the image metadata.
If it helps, the path for the keywords is /x:xmpmeta/rdf:RDF/rdf:Description/dc:subject/rdf:Bag
It’d be best to just inspect one of the images with exiftool to see where the keywords lie, but the “dc” in the path of gibborish toward the end of your note suggests that excluding the “dc” block might bear fruit. —Jeffrey
I have been trying out metadata wrangler (MW) for a feww weeks now. So far no problems till today. I exported a big batch of photos with MW enabled without a hitch. Later when i tried to do another smaller batch of 50 only i encountered this error message:
win32 api error 5 (“access is denied,”) when calling shellexecuteEXW from AgWorkspace.shellExecute
Googled that & only 1 other guy had a problem with his Lightroom & firewall.
On my part, I found that disabling MW solved the problem. I have windows firewall turned on (it was on even before I installed MW).
Have you encountered this problem and could you help me solve it?
Thanks. btw I’m on LR2.2
I don’t think it’s a firewall issue, but it’s clearly a security issue of some kind. I’d guess that there are permission issues with the plugin folder, and your OS (let me guess… Vista?) has decided to stop allowing Lightroom to execute shell commands (which is what it does when the Metadata Wrangler runs). I don’t know Windows security that much, but I’m sure that there’s some kind of security setting for which you have to add an exception for Lightroom and/or the plugin folder (and subfolders). I suspect that the automatic upgrade (which needs to run an unzip command) will also fail until this is solved. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey, writing from on the road between Sweden and Belgium
To support earlier requests for keyword removal by means of Metadata Wrangler, I would like to add the two following comments:
- In order to allow other applications to benefit from keywords, I have Lighroom write my keywords in the metadata of my originals. When I export in some cases I would like to keep the keywords and sometimes I want them to be stripped for privacy reasons. In Lightroom, however, I can only mark a keyword as always or never exported. It would be a nice addition to Metadata Wrangler to support case by case stripping of keywords (xmp:Subject, xmp-lr:Hierarchical Subject, iptc:Keywords) during export.
- The XMP block removal section of Metadata Wrangler does currently not seem to support the Lightroom specific XMP block xmp-lr. Exiftool does. Might be nice to add this too?
Cheers & thanks for the usefull plugins!
Would you mind following up via email with how you envision the selective keyword support to look like? About the XMP block, I’ll add it next week. I’m about to jump on a plane for The States, so am a bit distracted at the moment…. —Jeffrey
Issue in: 20090701.52
G’day from Australia…
Hi Jeffrey,
First of all, thanx for this great tool.
I have been using MetaData Wrangler (MDW) for a while without any issue. However, when I installed the latest version I see that the LensID information (picked from the AUX block of the XMP file) is removed in the export process. I have asked to remove “Metadata Not Explicitly Listed” to avoid getting a long set of adjustment settings from LR. With this latest version of MDW it seems to remove the LensID also. I would like to know if this is a bug or if there is any workaround for it.
Thanx…
Upali…
I’ll have to look into it. I won’t get to it for a bit, as I’m currently traveling, but it’d be helpful if you could turn on enhanced debugging (in the upper-right of the Plugin Manager), then do one export, then send the plugin log (with the “Send to Jeffrey” button, also in the upper-right of the Plugin Manager), including a note about what got removed that you didn’t expect (to remind me, since I won’t look in detail until I return to Kyoto next month). For the time being, one workaround would be to leave all metadata there, except explicitly remove the XMP-crs block, which removes all the LR develop data. —Jeffrey
Hello from San Francisco. Thanks for the great tool! My only suggestion/wish is to add a check box that would make raw files exempt from any metadata striping when exporting a copy of the original (or from RAW to DNG). In the case of RAW files it appears to render them unreadable anyway (at least with the settings that I had on Metadata Wrangler) and when exporting to DNG the file was still viewable but was missing any post-production editing that had been done. Anyway, I doubt that many people will want to strip information from RAW/DNG files so it might be nice to have a fail-safe for those who forget that the filter is installed and running. 95% of the time I’m exporting JPGs that need to be stripped so I can see myself making such a mistake in the future.
It took a while, but I just added this feature in version .57. —Jeffrey
I have Eye-Fi on my iMac and recently updated to Snow Leopard. I just downloaded the “folder-watch-jfriedl.lrplugin” and it appears that i is a PC program.
Is there some way to add it to the IMac?
Thanks.
Paul Scandlyn
There’s nothing about the plugin that is (or supposed to be) PC only, so if you find something that doesn’t work on your Mac, please let me know. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeff,
My Canon 500D (AKA T1I) inserts a piece of metadata in my photos that really freaked me out: the camera’s serial number. Now, I realize it’s next to impossible to trace a camera’s serial number back to its owner, especially if it’s been bought in a brick & mortar store, but still… Plus, whereas online sharing services usually provide anonymizing options for artists’ name etc…, no one ever seems to mention the camera’s serial number.
Do you think you could include the serial number amongst the options in Wrangler? Thanks…
In Lightroom the exact name of the value is “Serial Number”.
If the serial number exists, it’s in the Maker Notes section, which is generally not editable (and not included in JPG copies exported by Lightroom). However, Lightroom does extract the serial number in some cases to the XMP data, which is included, so to exclude that, exclude the “XMP aux” section with the Metadata Wrangler. —Jeffrey
I have metadatawrangler-20090903.53 version. If I have the BitDefender 2010 antivirus installed on my machine which has Vista 64 bit Ultimate, the Perl.exe does not work. It just hangs. I tried just typing the perl.exe which comes with the package on the command prompt and it hangs. I tried putting the Perl.exe as exclusion in the antivirus, still it did not work. If I uninstall the antivirus software then the Perl.exe that comes with the package works.
With the latest version of Perl.exe and antivirus still there on my machine, the Perl.exe works on a command prompt. I tried replacing the Perl.exe that comes with the plugin with the new version, then it complains about something else, atleast it does not hang. So I think the version that comes with the plugin does not work the BitDefender antivirus software. Can this issue be fixed.
I have neither Vista nor BitDefender so I can’t test, but there are no viruses in my plugin, so if BitDefender is having an issue with it, it seems they have a problem to address. —Jeffrey
I think this problem will happen on any operating system with BitDefender. You can download antivirus evaluation and try this. Like I said there is no hang problem with newer version of perl. Will you be able to update your package with newer version of Perl, if this is a possibility.
Thanks
Chandra
You probably just need to add an exception for perl or Lightroom or something. Like I said, plugins downloaded from my site have no viruses (and, FWIW, no one else has ever reported anything like this), so it’s not something I’m inclined to add very high up on my already-impossibly-long todo list. —Jeffrey
Perl.exe keeps crashing.
I am using the latest version of MetaDataWrangler (metadatawrangler-20090903.53.zip ) in Lightroom 2 v 2.5 (64 bit) on a machine running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit and I cannot export without getting a message for every file saying that perl.exe has failed to run. If I go to the Win directory in the installed plgin dir and try to run perl.exe directly it also crashes.
Any ideas?
Regards
Trevor
I’ve not heard other reports of problems on Win7, but I’ve also never tested it there. (I still run XP.) Could yous end details about the crash (what kind of crash?) via email? —Jeffrey
where do you store the presets in metadata wrangler?
i’m working on osx 10.5.8 and would like to use the same presets on my laptop.
There’s no easy way to import/export them, though now that I think about it, Metadata Wrangler settings (not presets) are saved when you create a Metadata Preset, so you can select a M.W. preset, create an Export preset, and repeat. Then copy the Export presets to the new computer and cycle through a load, save M.W. preset sequence. It’s a bit kludgy, but then, you’re the first person to ask about this in the couple of years the Metadata Wrangler has been out. —Jeffrey
Thank you, for this great LR-plugin !
Hi,
First of all, thank you for making such a usefull add-ons for Lightroom. Without plugins the LR would not be my choice of the post-processing software.
The Metadata Wrangler is very handy controlling the amount of the information one wants to publish with the exported pictures. Regarding that, I have a wish for an extended feature. I do not know if it’s feasible to implement with current approach, but asking never hurts, it adds information instead
So, would it be possible to partially filter keywords attached to exported pictures? Like when you have hierarchical keywords used in Lightroom, you could either select the hierarchies to be included or excluded. For example, one could define export to filter out all keywords under category “people” and “addresses” in order not to accidentally publish name or exact location of the subject. Or, just tag keywords under groups “country” and “animals” to the included in the export.
Do you think such a feature would be feasible?
It may be feasible, but it’s not likely something I’d do, since you can already mark individual keywords in Lightroom to be exported or not. —Jeffrey
Uh. Silly me, now I feel stupid… back to “reading the friendly manual”. But anyhow, this added the information, atleast to me and hopefully also someone else.
Only difference would be that by having this feature in the export plugin one could have different filtrations depending on the purpose of the export simply by choosing export presets accordingly.
Is there any way I can strip SPECIFIC keywords, if present, while retaining the rest of the keywords?
I use some keywords internally for organization that just look silly when present on images that I export to publish in places like Flickr.
Keywords that you never want to publish should just have the “include on export” flag turned off. Right click on a keyword in the Keyword List, and “Edit keyword”. —Jeffrey
I’m sorry, my fault for not being clear. I know I can set certain keywords to NEVER be exported in a global manner, but I use them for various internal purposes so I need them to export in most cases. However when exporting to specific areas, like Flickr for example, I need to strip certain keywords. I have been doing it manually but when I heard about this plugin I had hoped it would allow me to automate it.
I thought it would be easy to add, but I kept running into things (and adding more features), so it took two solid days, but I’ve just pushed v58 that allows you to do this, and more. —Jeffrey