Corresponding author: Ed Baker (
Academic editor: Jörg Holetschek
Many institutions and individuals use embedded metadata to aid in the management of their image collections. Many deskop image management solutions such as Adobe Bridge and online tools such as Flickr also make use of embedded metadata to describe, categorise and license images. Until now Scratchpads (a data management system and virtual research environment for biodiversity) have not made use of these metadata, and users have had to manually re-enter this information if they have wanted to display it on their Scratchpad site. The Drupal described here allows users to map metadata embedded in their images to the associated field in the Scratchpads image form using one or more customised mappings. The module works seamlessly with the bulk image uploader used on Scratchpads and it is therefore possible to upload hundreds of images easily with automatic metadata (EXIF, XMP and IPTC) extraction and mapping.
The use of embedded image metadata is becoming widespread in the biodiversity informatics community (e.g.
The eMonocot project (
There are three widespread image metadata formats that can be handled by this module. A subset of the EXIF standard (
An existing Drupal module, Exif (
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Platform: Scratchpads/Drupal
Programming language: PHP
Interface language: English
Type: Git
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The source code of this module is hosted on
EXIF, XMP and IPTC are the three image metadata standards in widespread use and the eMonocot project (
The configuration pages for this module can be found under \'Custom Exif Mappings\' in the standard Scratchpads/Drupal administration interface. The \'Settings\' tab allows those with the required privileges to set the site\'s default mapping, and to turn on or off the automatic saving of embedded image metadata to the image fields of the site when an image is uploaded. The \'User Settings\' tab provides an interface for individual users to override the site\'s default mapping with a mapping of their choice. New mappings can be created through the \'New Exif Mapping\' tab. The first step in this process is to name the new mapping and upload a sample image that contains all of the metadata fields that you want to map to Drupal/Scratchpads image fields. The module extracts all of the embedded metadata fields that have values assigned, and provides a form that displays the name of the embedded metadata field, an example value from the sample image, and a drop-down list of Scratchpads/Drupal fields that can be mapped to (Fig.
Once one or more mappings have been created, and the Site Default and/or User Default mapping has been set, the Scratchpads/Drupal fields will automatically be populated from the embedded image metadata when a new file entity is created - either through individual entity creation or through batch entity creation (using a module such as Plupload -
This module can be enabled on Scratchpads sites via the Tools page in Admin > Structure. It can also be downloaded by maintainers of other Drupal sites from
The module is potentially useful for anybody who wants to extract embedded metadata from uploaded images and use it in fields on a Drupal site. By making metadata available in fields, the metadata can be exposed to other third-party modules such as Views (
The eMonocot content team based at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew make use of this module on the eMonocot Scratchpads to bulk upload images which have had their metadata curated using Adobe Bridge. The module extracts the metadata embedded within the image into Drupal fields which allows for both display of this data on the Scratchpad and also in the DarwinCore Archive file that is used to contribute Scratchpad data to the eMonocot portal and also the Encyclopedia of Life. This workflow prevents images being separated from their accompanying metadata (through metadata embedding) and also saves time and effort - previously in Drupal performing the task of importing metadata would have required either copying and pasting data or spreadsheet manipulation using a number of different import tools.
This module requires the Drupal File Entity (
The module will work with any fields associated with image file entities in Drupal. The Scratchpads Audubon Core module (
Thanks to Simon Rycroft and Alice Heaton of the Scratchpads team at the Natural History Museum, London for their time and assistance and to the eMonocot Content Team at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew for their work finding bugs and suggesting improvements to early versions of this module.
Multiple image mappings, showing which are set at the Site Default and User Default - and which will be used for the currently logged-in user in bold.
Mapping embedded image metadata fields to Scratchpads/Drupal image fields. The image uploaded is a standard testing image from the EXIF Toolkit available from