IPTCInfo 1.9.1

Ported from Josh Carter’s Perl IPTCInfo-1.9.pm by Tamás Gulácsi

Ever wish you add information to your photos like a caption, the place you took it, the date, and perhaps even keywords and categories? You already can. The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) defines a format for exchanging meta-information in news content, and that includes photographs. You can embed all kinds of information in your images. The trick is putting it to use.

That’s where this IPTCInfo Python module comes into play. You can embed information using many programs, including Adobe Photoshop, and IPTCInfo will let your web server – and other automated server programs – pull it back out. You can use the information directly in Python programs, export it to XML, or even export SQL statements ready to be fed into a database.

1.9.1: a first release with some little encoding support - really a “pre-ALPHA” (!) state!

The class IPTCInfo now has an inp_charset and an out_charset attribute - the first is the read image’s charset (defaults to the system default charset), the second is the charset the writer will use (defaults to inp_charset).

Reader will find the charset included in IPTC data (if any, defaults to the system’s default charset), and use it to read to unicode strings. Writer will write using IPTCinfo.out_charset (if it is not set, will not write charset IPTC record).

With this, it is possible to read and write i18n strings correctly.

I haven’t tested this functionality thoroughly, and that little test was only on my WinXP box only, with the only other IPTC reader: IrfanView.

SYNOPSIS

from iptcinfo import IPTCInfo import sys

fn = (len(sys.argv) > 1 and [sys.argv[1]] or [‘test.jpg’])[0] fn2 = (len(sys.argv) > 2 and [sys.argv[2]] or [‘test_out.jpg’])[0]

# Create new info object info = IPTCInfo(fn)

# Check if file had IPTC data if len(info.data) < 4: raise Exception(info.error)

# Print list of keywords, supplemental categories, contacts print info.keywords print info.supplementalCategories print info.contacts

# Get specific attributes… caption = info.data[‘caption/abstract’]

# Create object for file that may or may not have IPTC data. info = IPTCInfo(fn)

# Add/change an attribute info.data[‘caption/abstract’] = ‘Witty caption here’ info.data[‘supplemental category’] = [‘portrait’]

# Save new info to file ##### See disclaimer in ‘SAVING FILES’ section ##### info.save() info.saveAs(fn2)

#re-read IPTC info print IPTCInfo(fn2)