Is there information for beginners like myself who are trying to get started with Apple's Terminal and Perl and ExifTool all at the same time. I am really only interested in one feature at the moment and that is extracting JPEGs from CANON RAW image files. I have tried to follow the directions but I have been unsucessful and it's getting quite painful. I would appreciate tutoring as my real work is photography and not computer programming.
-John
1) Using your favourite browser (ie. Safari), download the latest version of exiftool from http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/ to your desktop.
2) Open a terminal window (by running "Terminal" from the /Applications/Utilities folder).
3) In the terminal window, type the following:
(Note: Replace "5.25" with the version number you actually downloaded.)
4) Assuming your Canon RAW file is on the desktop and named "Canon.CRW", type the following to extract the JPEG image:
Or if your Camera produced .CR2 format RAW files, you need to extract the PreviewImage instead:
You should now have a file called "Canon_JFR.JPG" on your desktop. This is the JPEG extracted from the CRW or CR2 file.
5) If you want to transfer the EXIF information from the original RAW file to the extracted JPEG, type the following:
(or use Canon.CR2 if the file was CR2 format)
That's about it. If you want, you can follow the instructions in the README file to do a standard installation. Then you won't have to specify the exiftool directory on the command line. Note that some MacOS systems don't have the required Perl header files to do the "perl Makefile.PL" step. Instead, you can just copy "exiftool" and the "lib" directory to anywhere in your PATH (type "printenv PATH" in the terminal window to show your PATH directories).
Let me know if you have any troubles.
I am pretty much in the same situation as the original poster in that as a recent Mac adopter, I don't know very much about terminal etc so your response is very welcome.
Some additional questions.
1. In the example you gave (Point 4) was is the step if the file not on the desktop. How to you specify the path to it.
2. The main reason I am interested in this tool is that I want to create Exif data for TIFF files from a scanner. Is this possible?
3. If it is, can I write into the exposure fields such as shutter speed, Aperture etc. I have scans using a Minolta Scan Dual III and have all the exposure data for each shot as I used a Minolta Dynax 7 that allows me to output text files with this data.
4. I have checked and know that the file properties section of my scanned files do not have fields for aperture etc. Is it possible to create these fields in a TIFF files that doesn't have one? Perhaps transfer from one image that has then to these ones?
5. I noticed that some other post had something about lenses from the Minolta Dynax 7D. I am a hybrid shooter as in addition to the Dynax 7, I own a Minolta Dynax 7D and a Dimage A2. Are the raw files from these units supported?
Sorry for the number of queries and thanks for your assistance.
1) You can prefix any filename by the path where it is located. Directory names are separated by '/'. A complication is that on the Mac it is common to have spaces and sometimes other funny characters in directory and file names. This complicates things a bit on the command line because if this happens you have to either put quotes around the whole name or put a '\' before each space character.
So for instance, if the image was in my "/Users/phil/Pictures" directory, and assuming exiftool is in the current directory, I could type the following to extract the preview into a directory called "Previews" in the root directory of my boot disk:
Hints: The '~' character used above is a short form for your home directory name, which is '/Users/phil' in my case. Also, it makes typing a lot faster if you know about "tab completion": It is usually not necessary to type an entire directory name -- once you have typed a few characters, press the 'tab' key and the rest of the name will be completed unless there is another directory beginning with the same sequence of characters.
2) Yes, you can add EXIF information to any TIFF file (as well as a number of other file types).
3) You can write all the information you mention, plus a lot more.
4) You can either create this information from scratch, or copy it from another image. Whichever is easiest for you.
5) ExifTool should work on MRW images from any Minolta camera. I have tested it personally with raw files from the 7D and A2.
I hope this helps.
Thanks a million for the quick reply. I'll give it a bash. I'll go get a book and educate myself on using Terminal.
Funny that I am quite competent with the DOS Prompt in Windows and often write complex batch files but if I thought I could migrate my knowledge intuitively to Terminal, I couldn't have been more mistaken. I'll correct this oversight.
Looking at some of the other posts with references to excel etc. I suppose it is possible to write a series of tags to be loaded into an external file and have the program loop through a series of files and update them. However, I need to learn the basics first.
Thanks again, the hints were particularly useful
