ExifTool

Although exiftool is nothing specifically to do with scripting, I am writing a script that uses it to read and write some jpeg tags and have a question about exiftool’s operation that someone here might be able to help with.

Whenever exiftool writes one or more tags to a file, it creates a copy of the file with the new tags and leaves the original there just renamed …_original. Oddly, the Finder/Spotlight comments are moved to the new file (so the original no longer has them), but Finder Tags/Labels are not copied to the new file and this is a problem as I need to maintain all the original’s Labels.

Anyone suggest how to get exiftool to simply update the EXIF data of the file without having to create a copy first?

I suspect you’ll have more luck by going with the flow, and have your script copy the tags.

There is actually an option (-overwrite_original_in_place) that is supposed to do exactly what I want but it appeared to make no difference. However, looking at it in a fresh light this morning I was able to see how I’d got it wrong. So now it is working as I need with no copy files and all metadata intact.

I blame a recent road accident which has left me somewhat less than 100%, causing me to miss the obvious.