Memory Mate

Memories are dear

How happy I always get when turning an old photo finding some written words like.. Our trip to Rome in 1948. This was the year we first met. In the photo you can see my beloved Lisa and I at "La Scalinata di Trinità dei Monti" Greetings from passed times. I want to put greetings on "the back" of our digital family photos and videos in the same way. To be sure the greetings will always follow the photos, it needs to be put in metadata, so that it is readable (almost) everywhere. This can be combersome. There are so many different filetypes and even more types of metadata-tags. The goal of this python windows-application is to encapsulate the complexity, so that you can focus on enriching your dear memories for times to come...

How does it look

The UI is kept simple...

Installation

Installation package

The easiest way to get the application running on your computer is to use the installation-package. Go to https://github.com/JorgenMygindPilgaard/MemoryMate/releases/latest and follow the instructions

Get Source-code

You can use the souce-code from repsitory freely, suggest changes etc. The application is created using Python 3.11 and PyQt6.

How does it work

The application wrappes the amazing ExifTool by Phil Harvey. The application works with what I have chosen to call logical tags. These are tags that only the application knows of. The defaults are:

Tille
Date
Description
People
Geo-location
Photographer
Source
Original Filename
Full Description

These logical tags are all visible in the right hand section of the UI below the image preview.

When you use Memory Mate to change the content of one of the logical tags (e.g. if you change the title of a photo), the program writes the changed value to one or more physical tags in the file metadata. The Full Description is a special type of logical tag called a reference tag. In the default settings, all other logical tags are referenced in the Full Description. The Full Description reference tag is saved to commenly used physical tags for image-description, so that you will be sure to be able to see all information, also in programs only capable of showing one of the physical tags for description.

Functionalities

Edit Logical Tags

Just select a file and start typing. The data is saved when you navigate away from image or close application. For editing geo-location, click the window just below tag name "Geo-location". This will open a bigger window where you can search and pick a location. (Notice that showing and editing geo-location requires intenet-access. If you don't have internet-access, you can still use the application, but you are not able to view/edit geolocation) For editing image orientation/rotation, use the rotation-buttons below the image.

Consolidate metadata

Do you have images with title, description etc. not written to all physical tags. No problem. Select the relevant file/files/folder/folders in the left hand side of the UI, right-click and select "Consolidate metadata". The program will then make sure to "spread" the logical tags to all corresponding physical tags in the selected images.

Copy metadata

Mark the file/files/folder/folders. Then right-click the selection and select "Copy Metadata". Then select target file/files/filder/folders, right-click, tick the tags you want to paste (take care not pasting all tags. Can't be regretted), and select "Paste Metadata". If you have chosen more than one source-file, the "Paste Metadata" option is greyed out, and can't be used. You can in stead chose "Paste Metadata by Filename". When you paste using that option, Memory Mate will copy metadata from files in the selected source to metadata of files with the same filename in the target (ignoring the file type). That is very handy, if you store your original, raw files in a separate folder, and have edited metadata for all the corresponding jpg-files. You can then simply paste by filename to your original raw-files in one go.

Standardize filenames

If you have a folder with multible files and folders below, and you want to rename these files in a systematic way, ordered by date/time taken, the application can help you. Mark the files/folder/folders containing where renaming should take place. Right-click the selection and chose "Standardize Filenames". A popup will now ask you for prefix, numbering and postfix for your naming:

Popup for filename pattern

Enter the prefix if needed, the numberpattern (a string of x n's) and if needed a postfix. The example above will name the first file "2023-F035-001.jpg", the next "2023-F035-002.jpg" etc. (jpg-files as example). Files with same name (ignoring filetype) will get the same name after renaming also. That way you make sure that original/editet filepairs having same name before standardizing filenames, will also have same name after renaming has taken place.

How to configure the application

First time you launch the program, the language is set to english. You can change that to danish (only additional language prepared so far) by clicking the settings-wheel in the top right corner. After changing the language, relaunch the program. Also at first launch the program generates a settings.json file in "\ProgramData\Memeory Mate"-folder on your computer. At future launches, the program will use the existing settings.json file. You can add or remove logical tags in the settings.json, if you would like the program to work with other logical tags that the defaults. Make sure to take a backup of the originl settings.json. If you want to revert to defaults after editing settings.json, then simply delete the file from "\ProgramData\Memeory Mate"-folder. At next program-launch, the default settings.json will be generated again. In settings.json, logical tags are mapped to one or more physical image-tags per image/video file type. Here is a snipit from the settings.json showing in which physical tags the program stores the Title in jpg-files.:

    "file_type_tags": {
        "jpg": {
            "title": [
                "XMP:Title",
                "EXIF:XPTitle",
                "IPTC:ObjectName"
            ],
            "date": [
                "XMP:Date"

Reference tags

The Full description logical tag is a special type of tag called a reference-tag in the application. The reference tag is always a read-only tag on the screen, but it is still mapped to one or more physical tags, just like the normal logical tags. The content of a reference tag is defined in the settings.json file. You can configure the reference tag to one or more of the following components:

A logical tag with label
A logical tag without label
A fixed text (can be an empty string, if you need a blank line)

Here you see the default-configuration of content for the Full description reference tag:

    "reference_tag_content": {
        "description": [
            {
                "type": "tag",
                "tag_name": "title",
                "tag_label": false
            },
            {
                "type": "tag",
                "tag_name": "description_only",
                "tag_label": false
            },
            {
                "type": "text_line",
                "text": ""
            },
            {
                "type": "tag",
                "tag_name": "persons",
                "tag_label": true
            },
            {
                "type": "tag",
                "tag_name": "source",
                "tag_label": true
            },
            {
                "type": "tag",
                "tag_name": "photographer",
                "tag_label": true
            },
            {
                "type": "tag",
                "tag_name": "original_filename",
                "tag_label": true
            }
        ]
    },

Automatic backup running in background

Memory Mate updates image-files when you change logical tag values. Some backup-solutions lock files when doing automatic backup. If an image is locked, Memory Mate will not be able to update the metadata. It is therefore recommended that you pause your backup-program while using Memory Mate to update metadata.

Donate

Memory Mate is totally free for you to use. If you like the tool, you can donate an amount via paypal. It absolutly not needed: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/JorgenMygindPilgaard

JorgenMygindPilgaard / MemoryMate

readme