Tranquillity Base > Photo Meta Edit > User Guide > TIFF Metadata

• Sorting Items
• Editing TIFF, Exif
• Copy & Paste
• Batch Functions for Date-Time metadata
• Editing GPS
• TIFF Tag List
• Exif Tag List
• GPS Tag List

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You can change the display order of metadata items by Tag Number, Tag Name, or Custom.
First, select a metadata type — TIFF, Exif, or GPS. Then, do one of the following:

• Choose Metadata > Sort By > "...."
• Control-click the metadata table and choose Sort By > "...." from the context menu (as shown below).

If you choose Custom, you can reorder the items by dragging and dropping them.

1. Editable item
   Click to edit its value.
2. Addable item
   Click to add it to the file(s).
3. Addable items pop-up menu
   Click to show the items, then choose an item to add it to the file(s).
4. Remove selected items
5. Toggle display mode
   Click to switch between the following two display modes:
   • Show only metadata items currently saved in the file
   • Show all supported metadata items

TIFF, Exif, and GPS metadata items use different data types depending on the tag. These types can be broadly categorized as follows.

• Byte data
• ASCII characters
• 16-bit integers (signed: –32,768 to 32,767) (unsigned: 0 to 65,535)
• 32-bit integers (signed: –2,147,483,648 to 2,147,483,647) (unsigned: 0 to 4,294,967,295)
• Rational numbers, represented by a pair of 32-bit integers (signed / unsigned)
• Undefined data

Double-click a metadata item, or click or . This will open a data editing sheet, which provides an interface tailored to the data type, allowing you to edit values without needing to understand the underlying format.

Rational type values are stored as a pair of integers:a numerator and a denominator.
Depending on the camera model or manufacturer, the same value (e.g., 2.8) may be recorded as 28 and 10, 280 and 100, or 2800 and 1000.

You can also enter values directly, either as decimals or fractions, as shown below.

Most text items only support ASCII characters.

The User Comment tag (Tag #37510) supports not only ASCII, but also Unicode and JIS character encoding. However, JIS-encoded text is not recognized by most image viewer apps and should therefore be avoided.

♦ Text Corruption in Unicode
To ensure compatibility with Apple’s Preview app on macOS 10.11 and later, the Unicode encoding method was changed in Photo Meta Edit version 2.2.6 as follows:
・Version 2.2.5 and earlier: Always UTF-16BE
・Version 2.2.6 and later: UTF-16BE or UTF-16LE, depending on the endianness of the TIFF structure

You can see the endian of the TIFF structure below.

In Photo Meta Edit version 2.2.5 and earlier, Unicode characters were always written using UTF-16BE. If you open a TIFF (LE) file saved by these versions using version 2.2.6 or later, the Unicode text will be interpreted as UTF-16LE, resulting in text corruption. The same issue occurs in Apple’s Preview app on macOS 10.11 and later.

♦ Fixing Text Corruption
If the corruption is caused by a mismatch between UTF-16BE and UTF-16LE, you can fix it by reversing the byte order of the character data using the method below. (This applies only to fields where Unicode is available as a character type.)

• In the items view:
  Select TIFF (LE) from the metadata type list, then select the item you want to fix. Open the context menu and choose “Reverse Byte Order.”

  

• In the Favorites view:
  Click the "!" button to show the action view, then click the "Reverse Byte Order" button.

  

Choose a value from predefined list.

Select the metadata item(s) you want to copy, then choose Edit > Copy.

Select the image file(s) you want to paste into, then choose Edit > Paste.

You can use batch functions to edit the following Date-Time metadata fields across multiple image files:
- Tag #306: Date Time (TIFF)
- Tag #36867: Date Time Original (Exif)
- Tag #36868: Date Time Digitized (Exif)

1. Select the image files you want to edit, then select "TIFF" or "Exif" from the Metadata Type List.

   

2. Double-click a Date-Time metadata item, or click button next to it to open the Batch editing sheet. Then, from the pop-up menu, choose the desired function: Backward, Forward, Intervals, or Date-Time.

   

For Example: Forward 30 minutes

	DSCN0067	2012:10:15 14:28:21	→	2012:10:15 14:58:21
	DSCN0069	2012:10:15 15:47:03.25	→	2012:10:15 16:17:03.25
	DSCN0070	2012:10:15 15:47:03.28	→	2012:10:15 16:17:03.28
	DSCN0071	2012:10:15 16:03:51	→	2012:10:15 16:33:51
	DSCN0072	None	→	None
	DSCN0073	2012:12:24 19:02:39	→	2012:12:24 19:32:39

For Example: 10 minute intervals

	DSCN0067	2012:10:15 14:28:21	→	2012:10:15 14:28:21	(unchanged)
	DSCN0069	2012:10:15 15:47:03.25	→	2012:10:15 14:38:21.00
	DSCN0070	2012:10:15 15:47:03.28	→	2012:10:15 14:48:21.00
	DSCN0071	2012:10:15 16:03:51	→	2012:10:15 14:58:21
	DSCN0072	None	→	2012:10:15 15:08:21	(added)
	DSCN0073	2012:12:24 19:02:39	→	2012:10:15 15:18:21

The top file’s date-time is used as the base, and the specified interval is added or subtracted for each subsequent file. You can drag and drop files to reorder them as needed before applying the interval.

Set the same date-time value for each file.

When using the Backward, Forward, or Intervals functions, the entered values are applied sequentially to each selected file’s original date and time, in the following order:
Years → Months → Days → Hours → Minutes → Seconds → Subseconds

Because of this order and the irregularities of the calendar, certain combinations may produce unexpected results. For example, the number of days in a month varies, and leap years add additional complexity. Here are some examples that often lead to confusion:

Examples:

• Adding 1 month and 6 days to September 25 results in October 31, while adding the same to October 25 results in December 1 — one lands at the end of the next month, the other at the beginning of the month after that.
• Adding 1 month and 4 days to June 29 results in August 2, but subtracting the same from August 2 results in June 28, not June 29.
• Adding 1 month to August 30 or August 31 results in September 30 in both cases.
• Adding 1 month and 7 days to August 25 results in October 2 (a 38-day shift), while doing the same to September 25 results in November 1 (a 37-day shift). This shows that adding the same calendar duration doesn’t always result in the same number of days.
• Adding 1 year to Date-Time values—some from leap years, others from non-leap years—results in a shift of either 366 or 365 days, while the month and day remain unchanged.

It might be more appropriate to use day values when incrementing or decrementing. To calculate specific dates, click the 'Date Calculator…' button.

Subsecond values (fractions of a second) are stored in Exif using separate tags from the main Date-Time metadata.

- Tag #37520: Subsecond of Date Time (#306 in TIFF)
- Tag #37521: Subsecond of Date Time Original (#36867 in Exif)
- Tag #37522: Subsecond of Date Time Digitized (#36868 in Exif)

In the Batch Editing sheet for Date-Time, subseconds can only be specified using 2 or 3 digits (centiseconds or milliseconds).

Photo Meta Edit always stores subseconds using at least two digits.
If a single-digit value is entered, it is automatically converted to two digits (centiseconds). Example: 2 → 20

If GPS metadata already exists, select "GPS" from the Metadata Type list. When the list of GPS-related metadata appears, click the map (pin) button at the bottom of the window to switch to the map view.

You can edit the GPS Coordinates by clicking on the Map.

If GPS metadata does not exist, choose Metadata > Add > GPS and select a predefined entry, or choose "Custom..." to display a map as shown below.

You can edit the location by clicking on the map or by entering values directly into the coordinate fields.

The following three types of GPS direction-related metadata are displayed on the map:

- Tag #15: Track
- Tag #17: Image Direction
- Tag #24: Destination Bearing

Enter a value (0.00 to 359.00) into the direction field or use the rotation dial to add or edit the direction.
North: 0.0, East: 90.0, South: 180.0, West: 270.0

You can choose how the direction is displayed - Line, Delta, or Camera—by clicking the three-gray-dot button to the left of the input field.