pulling keywords from folders of images

[jscheide]

Hey folks -

I'm trying to pull the keywords from an entire collection of ~25,000 images in a single directory with all of its sub-directories. I could be wrong, but as far as I can figure out Photo Mechanic doesn't do this in any kind of "easy" manner, which is fine.

Anyone know of some software out there that will pull all the keywords from photos in an entire photo tree into a text document? Preferably on the inexpensive (or free!) side of things?

Many thanks for your suggestions.

[Hayo Baan]

Actually, PM is perfectly capable of doing what you ask! If you use the text exporter, you can have it create a file with the keywords of the files in the current contact sheet. You can find the Text Exporter under the File|Exporter menu.

As the main text you could use e.g., {filenamebase}{tab}{keywords} to get a tab separated list of your files and their keywords.

Another (free) solution would be to make use of Phil Harvey's exiftool (the command-line utility to extract metadata from files).

Hope this helps,
Hayo

[jscheide]

Thanks for the reply, Hayo. I don't think working with individual contact sheets is a feasible option for us, though, as I don't want to have to open and work through over 1000 contact sheets one by one.

I'd prefer that the software work through all the contact sheets in the subdirectories of the main directory that stores all of our images. Might just be wishful thinking. I'll look into the exiftool and see if that offers a workable solution.

Thanks!

[Hayo Baan]

Thanks for the reply, Hayo. I don't think working with individual contact sheets is a feasible option for us, though, as I don't want to have to open and work through over 1000 contact sheets one by one.

I'd prefer that the software work through all the contact sheets in the subdirectories of the main directory that stores all of our images. Might just be wishful thinking. I'll look into the exiftool and see if that offers a workable solution.

If all your images are in directories with a common base, why don't you let PM open the whole tree of image directories? In the navigator, right click on the “root” of the image directories and then choose one of the “open folder and subfolders in …” options. PM is capable of handling quite a number of total images, but loading can still take a while. Once done though, the export option I suggested would still work though. Be sure to test the output first, before running it on all your images

[jscheide]

Thanks, Hayo  - that helps me move forward on the process. I appreciate your reply!