indeed, and it would even be possible to code a filter that would operate with the refresh-metadata function and correct previously uploaded images.

OK I will look into this on the weekend ... thanks for suggestions ... tho I think software should be strict in what it outputs and flexible and forgiving in what it accepts as inputs...

Ok, what would you like to be different. Your camera is not following standards. Zenphoto has imported what it said was the title. You can change that if you wish.

Seems you pretty much have your head where the sun don't shine.

sun dont shine ? wow ... thats harsh.

What I'd suggest is an option in zen to allow the default title to be either the exif data or the filename or something else maybe a counter for that album with a root specified by user ..

yeh it would be nice if all digital images had the exif data you expect .. but it doesn't ...

Don't take that as too harsh but sbillard told you what to do... Again, Zenphoto is following the standards specified in the EXIF specifications. If a camera does not follow it can't be really our problem. Especially if we can't know every model out there and what it might do different. Therefore we have a plugin/filter system for users to do what they might specially need.

So feel free to write a plugin for your quite rare purpose and make it available for all users that might need it. Maybe you could also write a EXIF maker (zp-core/EXIF/makers) for it. We have really rarely reports about this, I can only think of two so far.

I have thick skin :-)

Discussion is healthy for making things better - or me understanding better and things staying the same - either way - its good progress!

I still think making a simple option for users to choose something other than the exif:ImageDescription field could be useful for some zen users.

They can all be changed within zen so there is no missing functionality - only convenience.

In my case, I'll write a short standalone script to modify all the exif:ImageDescription data which are bad - and just apply it as needed.

Thanks for making zen .. its pretty nice!

Maybe you could also write a EXIF maker (zp-core/EXIF/makers)

I have not had a chance to look at this - but I wonder if there is some way to leverage the rather large amount of work that was done by exiftool team (http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool) ?

Aside: ImageMagick is advertised as supported in 1.3.x .. is this support in the current svn ?

gene/

Imagemagik is in the SVN.
It would be a bad idea to make the field useage selectable. This is really a camera specific issue and should be handled either by a maker tool for the camera or a filter as we have already suggested.

Regarding exiftool: It seems to be a Perl libary you have to install on your server yourself. Therefore is would not really be an option since most users have shared hosting and probably not even the knowledge to do so. Therefore we have the Exifer libary which does not require that.

If you know Perl (I don't) you could of course try to adapt something.

To make the filter plugin helpful to other people with misbehaving cameras, I would suggest allowing the string to search for in the "Title" field customizable, as a misbehaving camera such as yours will put a predictable vlaue there (in your case, the make/model). Then allow the user to either select which other EXIF field to use instead (drop-down list), or use the filename.

In order to know which field to use, the user would have to look at one of the photos, then view the EXIF data to see which field name actually contains the title.

Presumably the filter would do its magic whenever it came across an image containing the specified search string as the title, and would therefore process already-uploaded images or future images.

The option to actually update the EXIF metadata in the file, if implemented, should be optional. That does risk data corruption / loss if the user makes a mistake, whereas not updating the EXIF metadata would not have that effect. If updating the image file itself is desired, then this can already be done by any number of graphics utilities.

Just my $0.02!

There are three filters that can be used for this:
new_image -- invoked only when an image is newly discovered (that is was not previously in the database.
image_refresh -- which is called during a metadata refresh
and
image_instantiate -- invoked whenever an image is instantiated.
I would suspect that the first two are the proper ones to use for this.

If the camera is using non-standard fields to store needed metadata then the maker script will really need to be made/modified as Zenphoto will not attempt to retireve the non-standard fields.

Also updating the metadata in the original image is not possible with the GD library. So it would be dependent on a graphics library that provides such support.

In the case at hand - the camera is stuffing the exif:ImageDescription field with the camera make and model ... which is weird.

Aside - you said ImageMagick is supported in svn trunk - is it supposed to say something about that ?

On the overview tab I have:
Graphics support: PHP GD library bundled (2.0.34 compatible)

no mention of ImageMagick ... which is def installed on the server - I did rerun setup but nothing changed.

Thanks.

gene/

You can enable it on the options > image tab if your server supports it.

Hmmm ... i dont see anything there ... but server most definitely has it installed and available .. I can run it by hand from a shell.

Logging in to webserver I have this:

$ rpm -q ImageMagick
ImageMagick-6.4.0.10-2

$ which identify
/usr/bin/identify

$ which convert
/usr/bin/convert

So its definitely available on the server ...

Any suggestions what I can do to make it be recognized ?

It requires the Imagick PHP extension, not just ImageMagick. I've considered making a command line version (after finishing Gmagick support), so that may come in the future for servers with ImageMagick but not Imagick.

That sounds good ... I'll look into the php imagmagick extension ...

Looks like there is both

php-pecl-imagick

and also a

php-pecl-gmagick

Do I need both of these ?

(They will be installed this eve .. )

Thanks for help.

After installing php-pecl-imagick it now shows up as an option ..
thanks

I seem to see the same problem with some of the albums in the same version of zen that gjunk is using. However it is certainly camera dependent, and in those cases where the field EXIF:ImageDescription is wrongly filled by the camera then the file name in the album is the name of the camera which is not a great default. I accept that strictly this is not a zen issue but it would be nice if the default were to be to use a pre-existing filename where it exists, rather than take it from the exif data.