Write a copyright tag into JPEG image metadata

This function writes a copyright tag into the copyright field of JPEG image Exif metadata. It does so recursively, so it works both for images that are sorted into subdirectories and unsorted images. Note that all images in subdirectories of inDir will be tagged. It is not required to run this function in the camtrapR workflow, but may be desired for data sharing or publishing.

addCopyrightTag(
  inDir,
  copyrightTag,
  askFirst = TRUE,
  keepJPG_original = TRUE,
  ignoreMinorErrors = FALSE
)

Arguments

inDir

character. Name of the directory containing camera trap images.

copyrightTag

character. The tag to be written into the Exif Copyright field

askFirst

logical. Ask user to confirm before execution?

keepJPG_original

logical. Keep original JPG files as .JPG_original files (TRUE) or overwrite JPGs (FALSE)?

ignoreMinorErrors

logical. Ignore minor errors that would cause the function to fail (set TRUE for images with bad MakerNotes, observed in Panthera V4 cameras)

Value

An invisible list of Exiftool output.

More importantly, the specified copyright tag is written into the Copyright field of the Exif metadata of all images in inDir.

Details

If askFirst = TRUE, the function will show a menu and asks the user to confirm the action before execution. Type "1" to write copyright tags and "2" to abort.

By default Exiftool creates a copy of each JPG image and preserves the original images (without the copyright tag) as .JPG_original files. Note that this behaviour will instantly double the number of images in inDir and the disk space required. If this is not desired, set keepJPG_original = FALSE.

ignoreMinorErrors is useful if copyright tags can't be updated correctly. This can be caused by bad MakerNotes and so far was only observed in Panthera V4 cameras. In that case, set ignoreMinorErrors to TRUE. This will add the "-m" option to the Exiftool call, thereby ignoring minor errors and warnings and assigning the copyright tag regardless.

Author

Juergen Niedballa

Examples

if (FALSE) {

if (Sys.which("exiftool") != ""){        # only run this example if ExifTool is available

# copy sample images to temporary directory (so we don't mess around in the package directory)
wd_images_ID <- system.file(file.path("pictures", "sample_images_species_dir"), 
                            package = "camtrapR")
file.copy(from = wd_images_ID, to = tempdir(), recursive = TRUE)
wd_images_ID_copy <- file.path(tempdir(), "sample_images_species_dir")

# define a sample tag
copyrightTagToAdd <- "Your Name (Your Organisation)"

# add the tag to the images
addCopyrightTag(inDir        = wd_images_ID_copy, 
                copyrightTag = copyrightTagToAdd)
1     # we choose "YES", i.e., we want to add a copyright tag
                
# you can check the outcome with function exifTagNames

metadat <- exifTagNames(wd_images_ID_copy)
metadat [metadat$tag_name == "Copyright",]
}


}