New Module: Image Nodes Now Inherit The EXIF and IPTC Metadata of the Image Uploaded

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Brian@brianpuccio.net's picture

From the MAQUM (Metadata Aware Quick Upload Module) project page:

MAQUM is short for Metadata Aware Quick Upload Module. MAQUM works with (and relies upon) Drupal's image module to upload images. Instead of uploading an image directly with the image module, upload an image through MAQUM and MAQUM will process your image's metadata and create your image node. ExifTool must be installed on your server as MAQUM requires it to read your images' metadata.

Metadata - What is it and why do I care?

Metadata is data that describes data. In the case of digital photography, metadata often includes things like shutter speed, aperture and film speed or ISO speed, as well as other information such as camera make, camera model, date and time. This type of metadata is reffered to as Exif.
Additionally, more metadata may be embedded into your images if you use a digital assest management application, such as Picasa, iPhoto, Lightroom or Aperture. This second type of metadata is called IPTC. Commonly used IPTC metadata fields include object name, caption, city, province/state, country, copyright and caption/abstract. These fields are populated manually in your digital asset management application and are embedded into the images upon export.

Metadata - What does MAQUM do with it?

MAQUM will take the EXIF field with the creation date and make that the date and time for your image node. If you upload an image without this field, the image node will just use the current date and time. MAQUM will also take the ITPC field for the caption/abstract and set that as your node's body. If this IPTC field isn't populated, it remains blank. MAQUM will use Object name IPTC field for the node's name, but if this file is not populated, it will default to the image's filename. Which fields MAQUM uses to set the node title, body and date and time is user configurable and may need to be changed depending on your version of ExifTool, as well as the way your camera and DAM software manage their metadata. (Sadly, if you note on the documentation on the ExifTool website and the IPTC website, none of this is completely consistent across all makes and models of cameras or among digital assest management applications.)
MAQUM will also take a list of fields (either EXIF or IPTC) and for each field, create a vocabulary for it (with the name of the field) and for each image you upload, tag it to the right taxonomy term (while creating it if necessary). For instance, if I went with the default options of shutter speed, aperture, ISO and focal length and uploaded an image wtih EXIF that reflected that I took the image at 1/100 of a second with an aperture of f/1.4 with an ISO set to 400 and my lens set to 30mm, the term 1/100 would be created in the shutter speed vocabulary, the term 1.4 would be created in the aperture vocabulary, the term 400 would be created in the ISO vocabulary and the term 30mm would be created in the focal length vocabulary. From this point on, Drupal's powerful taxonomy kicks in.

Tagging - You can't make anything on the web today without tagging, where is it?

If you use your digital asset management application to tag your images, they are stored in the IPTC field keywords. Just make sure you configure MAQUM to process this field and it will create a vocabulary called keywords and create and assign terms for each image you upload. Now you don't have to do it twice and get to use those keywords to your advantage in Drupal's taxonomy system.
Now don't forget to theme your image nodes so the metadata stored in the taxonomy system is displayed nicely.

Comments

Good news

zoo33's picture

This is good news for those of us who are still using classic Image nodes for their image archives. I haven't tested it yet, but I like what I hear, especially how you're using Taxonomy to map IPTC fields to nodes. The only think that might be a problem for me is if the creation date conversion is mandatory – I think I'd like to disable that feature. If I end up using this module, I'll submit patches for stuff I need.

Thanks!

/ Hannes Lilljequist – SthlmConnection

Date/Time Isn't Mandatory

Brian@brianpuccio.net's picture

Wow, it's a relief to see someone else likes this and I'm not the only one who wanted this sort of functionality.

As for the date and time being mandatory, it isn't. If you upload an image without any EXIF information, it just uses the current date and time. Also, in the configuration screen, if you delete the field name where the date is retrieved from, all images uploaded won't inherit the EXIF metadata and will default to the current date and time.

(Though I guess I need to work on more documentation.)

Thanks for the feedback. Having a fresh set of eyes see it for the first time is great!

Drupal6 Release?

wentsch's picture

Hey there,

thanks for your great work, that seems to be exactly what I need. As I'm running Drupal 6 I'm very interested having a more current version of MAQUM - is there something planned yet? Would it be much work to port it to Drupal 6?

regards

Image

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