I just imported 18,000 photos and there is no metadata for them. I expected that Tropy would use the Exif data and populate things like the datetime that the photo was created; camera model name and lat/long would be useful too. But no.
There is only date added, which is not helpful. I need to group my photos by datetime of photograph.
How do I get the Exif metadata into Tropy?
Tropy imports embedded metadata based on your default item and photo templates. For most EXIF fields this means you’ll need to add them to your default templates and then they will be extracted during import.
For the date field there are some special rules, however, as Tropy will check for exif:dateTimeOriginal and exif:dateTime in that order and fallback to the file’s creation date if those are not present. However, that date is added to the photo metadata only, not the item metadata. If your photos have either of these two EXIF fields set and you want a strict 1:1 relationship between items and photos then you can make a copy of the default item template, add the respective EXIF date field to it and then set this template as the default item template. If you then import a photo the photo’s EXIF date should be set at the item level. You can also add the EXIF date field as one of the columns in the item table and sort items this way.
So you’re saying that the only way to get EXIF metadata into Tropy is when the photos are imported? I have to delete 18,000 photos and re-import them? I think that is hugely sub-optimal. There should be an “import metadata” command to do it after import.
And you’re also saying that the default is to NOT import EXIF metadata? A user has to (a) know this, and (b) mess with the import template to make it actually pay attention to the EXIF metadata? It isn’t obvious that there is such a thing as a “template”, much less the knowledge of how to change the template.
There should be a selection of templates in the default install of Tropy: (1) no metadata (the present template, as you describe it), (2) all available EXIF data, (3) basic EXIF data (datetime of creation, etc). And then you ask after install which template the user wants to use. If they want something else, they can be directed to the documentation that explains how to edit templates for import.
In any case, it should be clear before importing photos (18,000 in my case) that how you set up a template somewhere in Tropy will affect how the metadata on your photos get imported into Tropy.
Yes, an option to re-import or refresh the embedded metadata is a good idea. We’ve had this on our wishlist for a while.
In general, I think you’re overly optimistic with regard to the similarity of project requirements. Most projects I’ve seen are not concerned with most EXIF metadata and would not want to import, for example, details about the camera make or technicalities of the capture. Even for fields that might bear relevance, many projects group multiple photos into a single item and, therefore, can’t easily map photo-level metadata, such as the photo’s timestamp to the aggregate item.
Would it be possible to have a pre-populated template that imports some of the ‘regular’ and exif fields? Like an example for starters?