You can also extract the EXIF user comments to a CSV with: exiftool -EXIF:UserComment -csv *.jpg Likewise, you can set the comments with: exiftool -comment='FUNKY JPEG COMMENT' image.jpg # set JPEG commentĮxiftool -EXIF:UserComment='FUNKY EXIF USER COMMENT' image.jpg # set EXIF UserComment If you find your comments in the JPEG or the EXIF section, you can extract just the comments with: exiftool -comment image.jpg # extract JPEG commentĮxiftool -EXIF:UserComment image.jpg # extract EXIF UserCommentĪdd the option -s3 to suppress the field-names in the above to save having to parse them out.
Then I suggest you try extracting the comments from your files to see how/where they are stored: exiftool -a image.jpg
I recommend using exiftool which you can install with homebrew, using: brew install exiftool MacOS Finder/Spotlight comments will not be legible on Windows, so if you want Windows compatibility, you need to standardise on JPEG or EXIF comments. In the light of your comments, I think the best way forward is to try and identify how/where the comments are stored for each platform (Windows vs macOS) and then to decide which method you want to use going forward.
