Write Gallery Tags on Files Metadata

[Kaboum]

Samsung Gallery tags are very useful to sort photos/videos however they aren't written in the photos/videos's metadata but in a separated database. This means I lose all the sorting I did on my medias when trying to export them on my computer or doing a cloud backup.

It would be great if you could change this and write the tags directly in the metadata, Thanks.

[Mujibar]

It's my understanding that tags made in Gallery, or any app, are specific to that app. App tags are not part of the EXIF metadata for photos & videos. Samsung cannot modify what is and is not included in metadata.

[Kaboum]

It's definitely possible. Samsung Gallery already gives you the possibility to modify date and location in the EXIF metadata and if it's true that there is no "Tags" field in EXIF there is an "ImageDescription" and "UserComment" fields that could be used. Or they could write another type of metadata such as IPTC keywords or XMP.

[AAbbott]

One way to do it is to rename the photo and add whatever the tag would be instead of using a tag. Photo names are included in the metadata.  So, you can name a photo, for example, Mary & me DisneyWorld 2026 (or DW 26) #1, and any subsequent pictures taken at DisneyWorld on that trip would be searchable by DisneyWorld 2026.  If you want all pictures ever taken at DisneyWorld (if you are one of those people that go multiple times), you would just search by DisneyWorld (or DW).  There's room for some pretty long titles, and abbreviations exist.

[Kaboum]

I didn't find a convenient way to rename a bunch of medias together, only can do one by one, also the names needs to be unique and long filenames can raise issues if the media is deep in the subfolders (filepath will be very long).

[AAbbott]

Yes, photos have to be renamed one at a time. You shouldn't have to worry about file path for searching, since most of the time a keyword will do. So if you wanted to search for Mary at DisneyWorld, you could search "Mary Disney" and it should bring all pictures with Mary at Disney. You can make your own naming convention. You just can't search by anything not in the metadata, so you can't search by a tag in other apps unless you tag it in the new app.

[Kaboum]

I agree it's doable but very inconvenient compared to tagging, that's why I'm requesting this feature, I think there is a real use case here.

[AAbbott]

As was explained, the tag only stays with the photo in the gallery. It does not even stay with the photo in the backup on Google photos. I don't know of any photo program on any computing device that keeps tags as part of metadata. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but in 30 years of computing, I haven't seen it.

[Kaboum]

lightroom does it, as I explained in another reply, there is no technical barrier here, just the Samsung Gallery doesn't have the functionality yet.

[Kaboum]

Again, I'm just requesting a feature for the Samsung Gallery. Doesn't mean there is no alternatives, I could also simply use powershell to modify those metadata. But I would like to do it conveniently from my phone and on a group of media selected by the Samsung Gallery based on location, face or other search criterias handled by the Gallery.