Tags Module - Tags from Exif Question

I believe that I might be missing something obvious, and before I decide to tackle any major edits to the module, I thought it would be best to ask first.

My question is, is there any way to automatically populate the tags from exif keywords during upload?

From what I can find, the only bulk import seems to be a rather roundabout process of:
1) in exif module, select add keywords on item upload which loads them to the g_keywords part of the database and cuts it off at 255 char

2) under site->maintenance copy keywords into tags which, even if you just added 1 or 1000 pics, goes through each an everyone of them and leaves you with the cut off and missing keywords in the tag database.

The biggest problem is the 255 char limit, since I, and doing a search has led me to believe, many others, have photos with tags that extend beyond that and I'm ending up with keywords like Los Angele instead of Los Angeles.

I did notice on each picture that there is a way to get Tags From Exif. This allows you to copy straight to the tag database the exif keywords and you don't have that 255 limit! But so far, this seems to have to be done on every single picture, one by one.

Am I missing something obvious? Is there no way to just grab the tags from the exif keywords on upload and get around the 255 char limit and not have the deal with each photo one by one?

Thanks.