Managing Photos and their metadata, etc

[OldSchool2]

Hello -

I have various tools that I use to manage my photos & videos. Mainly photos! I’m trying to streamline my process and believe X2 Ultimate can help me to streamline things. I have used a combination of X2, batch files that use command line utilities like Nconvert & exiftool, and Faststone Image viewer with its GUI.

I’m looking to streamline my process so I don’t have to jump around to different tools to do my work. For example, having to drag & drop files onto a BATCH file to do one thing, then open Faststone GUI to do some other things on the same set of files. With this in mind I have started looking into more of the wonderful and advanced X2 features, such as macros & user commands. I am also using Column Sets so I can see the jpg metadata in a detail folder view (such as Date Taken and GPS log/lat).

I’ve used X2 for many-many years, but never made use of these more advanced features, so I’m working to learn the best way to use these features now.

Photos I take usually have all the data (such as GPS), but Google Photos will name the file PXL_yyyymmdd_hhmmss based on GMT, not local time. And of course people send me photos that have no GPS, no Date Take, etc. via text messaging. It's a mess.

Here are some things I do to collect and prepare my jpg files:

• Rename the jpg to “img_yyyymmdd_hhmmss.jpg” based on the “Date Taken” metadata value.
• Scale them down in size.
• Fill in GPS long/lat values if missing.
• Change the Windows file system’s creation and modified date to the Date Taken metadata value.

I think I have a way to quickly do all the tasks EXCEPT setting missing GPS metadata in the jpg file. I can see the values (and tell if they are empty or not) in the detail folder view since I have X2 Ultimate, but I’m wondering the best way to handle the task of copying the GPS data from one known good jpg file to several others.

Any suggestions on this or other tools I should look at are welcome. Thanks.

6.2.0.3 ULT x64 9/1/2025

[nikos]

xplorer2 can help with most of these tasks EXCEPT setting GPS information and resizing.
* For renaming use FILE > MASS RENAME menu and use ${Modified:yyMMdd HH:mm} as part of the filename (adjust the date formatting to taste)
* for correcting dates see here: www.zabkat.com/blog/repair-android-photo-dates.htm

the ultimate edition can show you GPS information if you add e.g. System.GPS.LatitudeDecimal in the System property list (TOOLS > ADVANCED OPTIONS menu), however finding photos with missing GPS is tricky. It is easy to find missing text properties with NOT-rules, but it won't work for a number that can be negative like GPS...

in general deskrule is much better handling GPS, e.g. with its map search

xplorer2 can set (some) file properties in bulk using ACTIONS > FILE PROPERTIES menu, but I am sure GPS is read-only (and how could you know the location anyway?)

ps. it is possible to find JPG with missing GPS info using this programmable column (test it against 0)

Code: Select all

${GPS.LatitudeDecimal} > -90

[nikos]

can be done easier with deskrule: https://www.zabkat.com/blog/find-photos ... cation.htm