Wednesday, August 20, 2008

New Camera: First Photo!


New Camera: First Photo!
Originally uploaded by donXfive.
Surprisingly enough, this is a Linux post: cameras put extra data into the photo file, things like what type of camera took the picture, when (and, if your camera has GPS, where) the photo was taken, etc. Exif metadata is an example of this kind of thing.

My original photos are big files, with a lot more detail than is necessary for web viewing -- and the new camera produces even larger, more detailed photos -- so what I do is shrink them down before trying to upload them over my slow dialup connection. I would do this with a small program I wrote, that used standard file conversion utilities to decompress the JPEG-format file, re-scale the decompressed version and then re-compress it. Voila, a smaller file, but this method basically throws out any metadata; none of it ends up in the new file.

I really didn't worry about the metadata before, but now I want to keep the "photo taken on this date" information (as well as camera info) with the photo, since I will no longer be putting a visible date stamp on my photos. (Flickr shows this info to the right of the photo on the individual photo's display page.)

My solution is to do pretty much what flickr does when it process a photo: I used a small utility program called mogrify, part of the ImageMagick suite, which can do all these conversions while preserving the metadata. I tried it with this shot, and you can click on the photo to follow the link back flickr and see the metadata off to the right. Mission accomplished! My next task is to automate the process with a script and install it in Nautilus.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Nice sandal!

Good luck with new camera.
Chris got new lens-he's really into photography too.