How can I remove the ImageDescription tag from some Huawei P20 JPEGs so they rename correctly?

Question

pyRenamer has worked fine for years with my usual pattern:

`{imageyear}-{imagemonth}-{imageday}_{imagetime}_{rand1000-9999,4}_{cameramaker}_{cameramodel}.JPG`

With some JPEGs from a Huawei P20, about 10% fail to rename properly and I get underscores instead of the date/time fields. The difference I found is that the files that fail contain an `ImageDescription` tag with what looks like hexadecimal data, while the others do not.

Is that tag likely to be causing the issue, and what’s the best way to remove it from one file or batch-process many files from the command line?

user11924 · Accepted Answer

exiftool is probably the best multi-purpose tool for working with and manipulating image metadata.

You can remove undesired tags from image files using,

exiftool -overwrite_original -P -ImageDescription=

If modifying or deleting tags in an image file, exiftool normally writes the resulting file to a temporary output file, so as not to clobber the original file; the -overwrite_original option causes it to write over the original file.

The -P option preserves the original file’s filesystem creation and modification time stamps (nothing to do with the image’s date-related EXIF tags). If you don’t care about preserving this file information, you can omit this option.

exiftool accepts multiple file names and wildcard file names, so you can easily batch this command to preprocess all of your problematic file.

How can I remove the ImageDescription tag from some Huawei P20 JPEGs so they rename correctly?

2 Answers

Your Answer

Related Questions