feta - edit image metadata with feh

feh + exiftool + rofi to edit image meta data.

What?

It's just a BASH script that calls feh and sets some actions. The actions use rofi for user input and exiftool to change the metadata on the images.

By default it sets XMP tags in the Dublin Core namespace

Actions

1. Set Subjects: Replace all subject tags with selection or entry
2. Add Subjects: Add subject tags based on selection or entry
3. Rm Subjects: Remove tags based on selection
4. Set Title: Set title based on entry
5. Set Description: Set description based on entry

Why?

I wanted to add metadata to a bunch of images. I didn't want to install a big bloated photo management GUI. I already had feh, exiftool, and dmenu (actually rofi, because I wanted the -multi-select option for subjects). Those tools are great and can do all the things.

It sets XMP-dc tags as default because afaik that's hip, cool, open, modern standard or something. This isn't my wheelhouse tho, so tell me if there's a better way.

Install

Install feh, exiftool, and rofi...probably just use your package manager.

Put the script bin/feta in your $PATH

Usage

$ feta path/to/images

You could call the sub functions directly from the command line if you wanted to, but you might as well just use exiftool or whatever directly.

Config

By default, it looks for a config file in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/feta.cfg. That can be overridden by setting $FETA_CONFIG.

Environment variables override config values.

config var	env var	default
subject_list	FETA_SUBJECT_LIST	$XDG_DATA_HOME/feta-subjects
tag_subject	FETA_SUBJECT	XMP-dc:subject
tag_title	FETA_TITLE	XMP-dc:title
tag_desc	FETA_DESC	XMP-dc:description
exiftool_opt	n/a	()

• subject_list is the path to a text file of available "subjects." Subject strings will be added to the file (if it exists) when using the interface.

• tag_* options set what tags exiftool actually sets.

• exiftool_opt is an array of options passed to exiftool when setting metadata. By default, exiftool makes copies of original images so you don't lose data. If you're feeling lucky you could set eg. exiftool_opt=(-overwrite_original) in the config to suppress this behavior.

feh Theme

If you don't like the options feta sets when calling feh, you can use feh themes (see feh documentation) and set it up yourself.

Basically, if feta is in your $PATH, you symlink feh into your path as eg. ~/bin/gouda, and setup a feh theme (~/.config/feh/themes) as the following...you should get the basic feta functionality by calling gouda without some of the "unnecessary" settings that are default. Read the feh docs, look at the run function in feta and tweak to your liking.

gouda --info "feta info %F" --action1 ";[Set Subjects] feta prompt-set-subjects %F" --action2 ";[Add Subjects] feta prompt-add-subjects %F" --action3 ";[Rm Subjects] feta prompt-rm-subjects %F" --action4 ";[Set Title] feta prompt-set-title %F" --action5 ";[Set Desc] feta prompt-set-desc %F"