Using `jhead` to write comments to JPEGs

Download jhead, a small utility for such purposes. It is in the public domain, and has versions for windows, red hat, freebsd, OS X, as well as source code that can be used to compile it on any linux or unix flavor. Either follow the instructions on the page, or follow these simplified instructions:

LINUX

Get the executable working. For Redhat, download the executable. At a shell prompt, find the file and type chmod +x jhead. Move the program to somewhere within your PATH variable (to see what your path is, use echo $PATH) so that you can execute it; alternatively, to execute it, reference it by its absolute or relative location to your current working directory.

With other *NIX systems, download the source, compile it (probably with configure and then make install and then make), then modify the executable as mentioned above. However, you can likely use the prebuilt executable -- I got it to work on Debian with the 2.4.27-2 kernel.

WINDOWS

Download the jhead.exe file to someplace, e.g. the Desktop
You must run the program from a command prompt. Go to the Start Meny, select "Run" and type cmd which gives you a command window.
Like in unix and linux, you have a "path" variable. You can see the directories in your path by simply typing path at the prompt. Place the executable, or a link to it, in one of these directories, or else modify your path variable.
get to your pictures folder in the command window. If you're not familiar with DOS commands, they're pretty similar to Unix shell commands. Use cd to change directories, dir to view the contents (like ls in unix shells), and you can make heavy use of the tab-completion feature. To run the program, just type jhead (see below for more instructions).

MAC OSX

Figure it out yourself

Using the program

To see all the options available, type jhead -h

To add a short comment: jhead -cl "Comment text here" FILENAME

To view a comment in linux: jhead -cs /dev/stdout FILENAME ; echo

To view a comment in windows: jhead -cs temp.txt FILENAME
then: more temp.txt (not very elegant; sorry!)

To write a comment to a file FILE: jhead -cs FILE FILENAME

Note that the above comments are different than the EXIF data, which are data recorded by digital cameras about how the picture was taken (e.g. date, exposure, flash, aperature, ...). If you're using JAlbum, many of their prebuilt skins allow users to toggle the display of the EXIF data on and off.

Using jhead to write comments to JPEGs

Using `jhead` to write comments to JPEGs