Yet again the JPEG 64kB segment-size limitations make life difficult for me.
Presumably to avoid this limitation, the new Leica S2 writes the complete maker notes (860kB of them) outside the EXIF segment, and instead writes them after the JPEG EOI. Needless to say, this complicates things for me yet again.
But there are other problems in the S2 maker notes that make me pray my samples are from a pre-production camera and that the format will be fixed in the production model. Many maker note values, including one offset, have a constant value of 0x0800. This can't be right. I will wait until I get some production samples before adding support for this camera.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Software designed to make you feel stupid
Adobe LightRoom
The first time I tried to use Adobe LightRoom to edit metadata was frustrating to say the least. First I had to figure out how to import the image (why? the image was right there on my desktop!!), then I had to find the metadata panel (which is quite a challenge since it had scrolled down and out of view in one of the panes to the right). I didn't find this panel at first, so the "Metadata" menu entry drew my attention. Sounds good. That's what I want, right? However, this menu seems to deal only with a group of metadata presets, which complicated things since I just wanted to change a single picture. Oh well. Forge ahead. Editing the metadata presets seemed like the right thing to do. When I was done editing LR forced me to save the presets with a new name, which I didn't want to do, but I didn't have any choice, so I did it anyway. Then, the next obvious step was "Save Metadata to File", which didn't work. Darn. Presumably it didn't work because I needed to somehow select the presets that I had just saved, but how? I could see no entry in the menus to set the current metadata presets. At this point I seem to remember taking a time out and coming back to the problem another day. Eventually I was able to somehow change the presets and write my changes to the file, but right now for the life of me I can't figure out how I did this (I have LR open now and I'm trying to reproduce what I did). Oh wait. There it is. Right-click on the image and select the presets from the "Metadata Presets" menu item (the good ol' hidden menu to the rescue). No, wait. That didn't work. Try a splat-S for good luck. Hooray! Success! Finally.
Capture One
Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Capture One and tried to edit some metadata in an EIP (Capture One Enhanced Image Package RAW image). From my experience with LR, I guessed I would first have to figure out how to import the image. So I did this, which was confusing enough, but then for the life of me I couldn't see how to select the image once I had imported it. You would think it would be displayed somewhere in the library of images, but no. I couldn't find it. Finally after some searching on the hard disk I found it nested deep below a "Capture One" directory in my "Pictures" folder. OK, cool. Select the image in the browser pane from that location on the disk. At least the metadata pane is not hidden, so I click on an IPTC entry and try to change it. Nothing. Can't enter any text. Darn. Time to RTFM. The FM says that I must 1) import the image. Good. Done. Let's proceed. Then 2) click on the IPTC entry. Good. Done. What next? 3) Type in new value. Darn. Bummer. Tried that. The keyboard focus never changed. The nice picture in the FM shows a highlighted text entry field. Can't make that happen. Clicking a thousand times still doesn't bring it up. Try going back and re-importing different images to different locations. Now I have copies of images scattered across my hard disk and I still can't change any metadata. After about an hour of searching through the menus, clicking all the various tiny icons in the interface, and RTFM-ing, I finally give up. It just isn't worth it. I have to watch my blood pressure.
Sweet Irony
...and people complain about the ExifTool command line interface.
The first time I tried to use Adobe LightRoom to edit metadata was frustrating to say the least. First I had to figure out how to import the image (why? the image was right there on my desktop!!), then I had to find the metadata panel (which is quite a challenge since it had scrolled down and out of view in one of the panes to the right). I didn't find this panel at first, so the "Metadata" menu entry drew my attention. Sounds good. That's what I want, right? However, this menu seems to deal only with a group of metadata presets, which complicated things since I just wanted to change a single picture. Oh well. Forge ahead. Editing the metadata presets seemed like the right thing to do. When I was done editing LR forced me to save the presets with a new name, which I didn't want to do, but I didn't have any choice, so I did it anyway. Then, the next obvious step was "Save Metadata to File", which didn't work. Darn. Presumably it didn't work because I needed to somehow select the presets that I had just saved, but how? I could see no entry in the menus to set the current metadata presets. At this point I seem to remember taking a time out and coming back to the problem another day. Eventually I was able to somehow change the presets and write my changes to the file, but right now for the life of me I can't figure out how I did this (I have LR open now and I'm trying to reproduce what I did). Oh wait. There it is. Right-click on the image and select the presets from the "Metadata Presets" menu item (the good ol' hidden menu to the rescue). No, wait. That didn't work. Try a splat-S for good luck. Hooray! Success! Finally.
Capture One
Yesterday I downloaded a copy of Capture One and tried to edit some metadata in an EIP (Capture One Enhanced Image Package RAW image). From my experience with LR, I guessed I would first have to figure out how to import the image. So I did this, which was confusing enough, but then for the life of me I couldn't see how to select the image once I had imported it. You would think it would be displayed somewhere in the library of images, but no. I couldn't find it. Finally after some searching on the hard disk I found it nested deep below a "Capture One" directory in my "Pictures" folder. OK, cool. Select the image in the browser pane from that location on the disk. At least the metadata pane is not hidden, so I click on an IPTC entry and try to change it. Nothing. Can't enter any text. Darn. Time to RTFM. The FM says that I must 1) import the image. Good. Done. Let's proceed. Then 2) click on the IPTC entry. Good. Done. What next? 3) Type in new value. Darn. Bummer. Tried that. The keyboard focus never changed. The nice picture in the FM shows a highlighted text entry field. Can't make that happen. Clicking a thousand times still doesn't bring it up. Try going back and re-importing different images to different locations. Now I have copies of images scattered across my hard disk and I still can't change any metadata. After about an hour of searching through the menus, clicking all the various tiny icons in the interface, and RTFM-ing, I finally give up. It just isn't worth it. I have to watch my blood pressure.
Sweet Irony
...and people complain about the ExifTool command line interface.
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