fmgo13 is it possible to tag photos in FMGo 13 ?

[Nakizimbo]

It seems that photos taken in FM Go automatically get saved with the date and time that the photo was taken. Is there any way of changing this so that the photo is either saved or tagged with the contents of a nominated field field from the same record that the photo sits in ?

[Wim Decorte]

You mean changing the EXIF data of the picture itself?  Perhaps through a plugin but not natively I think.

[Claus Lavendt]

FileMaker 13 can read some metadata from image files in a container field, but it do not give you a way of writing edited metadata back to an image file.

Troi File Plugin does give you that ability, but it will have to be done from a desktop or server.

[jbante]

You can use FileMaker 13's new Base64Encode function to access the Exif data in the photo, edit it, then use the Base64Decode function again to save your changes back to an image file. (Researching the details of the JPEG and Exif byte-level formatting are an exercise left to the reader.)

[Claus Lavendt]

Hi Jeremy

Cool, I have not thought of that….

However, it is pretty not, straight forward and pretty advanced to figure out the details….

…and it must be working best on small files, since you have to encode/decode the entire image...

[jbante]

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. I've been working with PNGs byte-by-byte this week, and though the image data itself can be a bear to process, the metadata isn't actually that hard once you've got your bearings with how the file is put together as a whole, which is not all that complicated. Once the image is encoded in Base64, it's not be necessary to decode the entire string to get to the metadata.

 

I haven't been working with JPEG, but a first semi-technical glance suggests that the overall structure is approachable enough, and I don't see any mentions of file-wide checksums or error correction codes that would require scanning through the entire file just to change a metadata segment of it. Unfortunately, I couldn't easily find a more details specification that I didn't have to pay for. Plugins are probably the most expedient option, just not the only one for those with the gumption.

[Nakizimbo]

Thanks all for your comments. Will look into plugins.