Delete metadata descriptions with a Photoshop Script? - macos

Question

Is there an equivalent of deleteProperty(XMPConst.NS_DC, "description”) or some way to clear out EXIF:ImageDescription, XMP-dc:Description and IPTC:Caption-Abstract with a Photoshop Script (ie, JavaScript or AppleScript)?
I am trying to remove the tags/descriptions below from TIF, PSD and PSB images:
[EXIF:IFD0] ImageDescription
[XMP:XMP-dc] Description
[IPTC] Caption-Abstract
I can do this with Exiftool with this code:
exiftool -m -overwrite_original_in_place -EXIF:ImageDescription= -XMP-dc:Description= -IPTC:Caption-Abstract= FILE
While that works great for me, I have lots of vendors that would need this in their workflows so it would be easier for them to use an action with the Photoshop Events Manager "On Document Open", or via an Automator script (Java or AppleScript) in their workflows than installing ExifTool. Looking for some help to do this...
I don’t have much coding experience, but I found the JavaScript code below on PS-Scripts as a starting point. This code doesn't require Photoshop which I like and could be done with Automator, but it only references the one tag. Also, I don’t need to write anything to the tags as this code does (I’d prefer just to delete or wipe the content and/or tags so they don’t show up).
Code: Select allvar f = File("/c/captures/a.jpg");
setDescription(f,"My new description");
function setDescription( file, descStr ){
if ( !ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript ) ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript = new ExternalObject('lib:AdobeXMPScript');
var xmpf = new XMPFile( File(file).fsName, XMPConst.UNKNOWN, XMPConst.OPEN_FOR_UPDATE );
var xmp = xmpf.getXMP();
xmp.deleteProperty(XMPConst.NS_DC, "description");
xmp.setLocalizedText( XMPConst.NS_DC, "description", null, "x-default", descStr );
if (xmpf.canPutXMP( xmp )) {
xmpf.putXMP( xmp );
}
xmpf.closeFile( XMPConst.CLOSE_UPDATE_SAFELY );
}
And below is an attempt at the JavaScript that would be used as a Photoshop Event on "Open Document"; but again I don't know how to amend to ensure all 3 tags reference above are cleared:
function removeDescription() {
whatApp = String(app.name);
if(whatApp.search("Photoshop") > 0)
if(!documents.length) {
alert("There are no open documents. Please open a file to run this script.")
return;
}
if (ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript == undefined) ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript = new ExternalObject("lib:AdobeXMPScript");
var xmp = new XMPMeta( activeDocument.xmpMetadata.rawData);
xmp.deleteProperty(XMPConst.NS_DC, "description");
app.activeDocument.xmpMetadata.rawData = xmp.serialize();
}
}
removeDescription();
Finally, below was an alternate that was tried that wipes the Description, ImageDescription and Caption-Abstract on TIFFs and PNGs on the first try, but takes running through twice to work on a PSD/PSB/JPG. I think it has to do with the interaction between Description, ImageDescription and Caption-Abstract, and the solution possibly resides with amp.setLocalizedText to nothing?
function removeMetadata() {
whatApp = String(app.name);
if(whatApp.search("Photoshop") > 0) {
if(!documents.length) {
alert("There are no open documents. Please open a file to run this script.")
return;
}
if (ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript == undefined) ExternalObject.AdobeXMPScript = new ExternalObject("lib:AdobeXMPScript");
var xmp = new XMPMeta( activeDocument.xmpMetadata.rawData);
if (xmp.doesArrayItemExist(XMPConst.NS_DC, "description", 1))
{
xmp.deleteArrayItem(XMPConst.NS_DC, "description", 1);
}
app.activeDocument.xmpMetadata.rawData = xmp.serialize();
debugger
}
}
removeMetadata();

Answer 1

Here is an example Python script that uses the Pillow library to remove the metadata descriptions.
from PIL import Image
# Open the image file
image = Image.open('example.jpg')
# Remove the EXIF:ImageDescription metadata field
image.info.pop('EXIF:ImageDescription', None)
# Remove the XMP-dc:Description metadata field
image.info.pop('XMP-dc:Description', None)
# Remove the IPTC:Caption-Abstract metadata field
image.info.pop('IPTC:Caption-Abstract', None)
# Save the modified image file
image.save('example_modified.jpg')
Change "example.jpg" to your needs.
there may be other metadata fields that contain descriptions, depending on the specific image file format and how it was created. You may need to modify the script to remove additional fields if necessary.