Collaborative photo metadata editing?

June 12, 2018 5:27 AM

Is there a photo hosting site that allows collaborative editing of metadata?

My family has a big library of scanned photos from across decades (include old scans from a genealogy project). What we would very much like to do is be able to is have multiple accounts on a single gallery where each of us can:
1. View the photos, upload new ones
2. Tag them with names (if known)
3. Set their date
4. Where appropriate, have the above data put into the files themselves (EXIF) so the data isn't forever tied to a single site.

Google Photo doesn't work (shared galleries aren't really a thing there, doesnt change EXIF data, no way to multiselect and edit), and none of the other places we've looked seem much better.

We are okay with a pay service, but it seems like what we are looking for doesn't exist?

posted by malphigian to Computers & Internet (1 answer total)

Best answer: I've never found this as a feature when I've looked through open source web-based photo gallery software in the past, which was completely bizarre to me. I can understand why a commercial program or service would hang on to the metadata in its greedy little paws, but for free open-source software I would think storing the metadata in the photo files themselves is just sort of an obvious thing to do.

Anyways, taking a look at the comparison of metadata editors article on Wikipedia, there are now some that appear to be web-based galleries claiming to do what you want, new since the last time I looked.

I see from your previous questions that you must have the skills to set a server-based package like this up on a computer or virtual server, so if you find one you take a liking to I guess it's a matter of whether you'd want to put in the effort. Another thought is that maybe you could create or find a bot-like thing to run against a more mainstream photo gallery web site, which would download the image files and the metadata and embed it and re-upload the new metadata-augmented version of the file.

(And lastly, a couple of the gallery software applications I've used included a plugin system, so even if the feature isn't listed, in theory you could find a plugin which does the metadata embedding, or write one yourself...)
posted by XMLicious at 6:30 AM on June 12, 2018 [2 favorites]