Questions about ExifTool

AntonLargiader wrote in post #19476735
I think it's the apostrophes that fixed that. Seems that without them, the shell tries to interpret parts of the command as a shell command. There is some documentation of the ${} syntax at the exiftool site; seems that it should be avoided if possible but sometimes it's necessary.

The documentation is, I'm sure, quite thorough but for a newbie it's an impenetrable wall of stuff with no structure or index. It's inconceivable to me that no one has offered to write a user-friendly manual, so I assume it's not a welcome contribution. I'd be happy to take a stab at it once I learn my way around, though.

Dead on with the documentation. It's impenetrable. I spend so much time looking for that 'one thing' that I've never really got a grasp on the language as a whole.

I've asked for help in forums. I always get, "RT*M, it's #15 in FAQ8, numbskull." And they'll link to FAQ8 and they'll be right, so I guess that's helpful. Can't say it isn't in the documentation.

I'm a pretty good BASH guy. I only use EXIFtool to pull data from individual image files, then parse those files with shell scripts. Didn't need to learn a ton about EXIFtool for that.

Let us know if (and how) you figured out how to write to a CR3 file. I've never played with a writeback. But I have been playing with AI editing software, and some of those strip out all the exif data from the result image. I've been wondering if there's a way to use EXIFtool to copy that data back in from the original image.

I just looked. There's no O'reilly book.

OK, I got it! Despite the example having the field as "comment" and the info panel in DPP having it the same way, the actual field is named UserComment. Once I changed my syntax appropriately, it worked:

exiftool '-UserComment<shuttermode' /Users/antonlargiader/​Pictures

exiftool '-UserComment<shuttermode' /Users/antonlargiader/​Pictures -r

I'm on a Mac so in the terminal I just type exiftool, add a space and drag the file in. I only use it to see if I shot ES or EFCS. For stabiliser it always says On (2) so it does not help there.

It's a good tool but some work to open it and then try and remember where the shutter mode is. Common Canon. Get your mushroom growing base together and get that info into DPP. Pretty important to know that these days.

lsquare wrote in post #7272956
I know this may be a bit dumb to ask, but I'm still hoping someone have tried out ExifTool GUI.

http://freeweb.siol.ne​t …foto/exif/exift​oolgui.htm

From the screenshot, it seems like I just need to set the "shift amount" and as long as those date and time fields are checked, then when I press "execute" the time on the EXIF will change?

I have been using ExifToolGUI extensively on Windows 7 machines and Canon CR2 files to write and alter all manner of metadata, including altering date/time stamps.

Whatever is done to a file in ExifToolGUI is permanent (until you change it again) and is recognized in all other programs as such.

However, regardless as to whether a timestamp is original from a camera or added/altered by ExifTool, some (many) programs will corrupt that stamp; so, before trusting any program to not change the Date Taken stamp, test the programs behavior in that regard, paying attention to both date and time.