XMP description problem with jpg's

[happysnapper]

Hi Mario.
Is there anyway I can "persuade" I-Match to recognise an image description written in a jpg. xmp sidecar file?

The problem is I'm trying to replace my use of Photo Mechanic for culling with FastRawViewer. which writes xmp sidecar files for both RAW and Jpg's and I-Match is only finding descriptions applied to RAW files.
Of course I know the culling can be done in I-Match but I do have a good reason for this workflow.

Thanks

[Mario]

IMatch automatically detects and uses the XMP sidecar file for JPEG (an XMP file by definition belongs to all files with the same name in the same folder).

Embedded metadata is considered "more important" during ingest though.
Several native metadata tags are mapped to the XMP description in the sidecar file and may override it during ingest. This does not happen with standard-compliant embedded XMP in the JPG, but may happen with your sidecar file. If there is an EXIF::UserComment or and IFD description or a TIFF::comment or a legacy IPTC description, the description in the XMP will be ignored - as it must be for standard-compliant applications.

Why FastRawViewer does not implement the XMP standard escapes me. This is an ISO standard and not a "Do as you please" standard. I'm sure it does neither bother to map the description it writes back into EXIF/IPTC either, thus causing even more problems.

You may want to import the XMP data into the JPEG file with ExifTool. There are many instructions for this on the net I'm sure.
Since this is problem created by another application in your workflow and not an IMatch problem and I'm at 120% utilization right now, I leave it at that. I'm sick of metadata issues caused by other applications.

[happysnapper]

Thanks for quick response as usual Mario. I'll have to ask Alex at FRV more questions although he says.


"FastRawViewer uses XMP-Standard xmp tags for Title and Description."

[Mario]

JPG files must use embedded XMP data, like PSD, DNG, TIFF, GIF, PNG etc.

If FRV prefers to write XMP sidecar files, he should at least ensure that the mirrored tags in XMP and EXIF, GPS, legacy IPTC are updated accordingly. It's not only the description, there are many tags which exists in multiple metadata formats found in image files. Having more than one set of truth is not good.

[happysnapper]

Hi Mario,
Just heard back from Alex.

"FastRawViewer is able to record XMP-block into JPEG files.
To enable this feature use
1)  Preferences - XMP - Write XMP blocks to JPEG files instead.....
2) For RAW+JPEG mode you may find additional option 'RAW+JPEG mode: embed XMP block into JPEG'  useful."

FRV has almost as many customisable options as I-Match Haha! but I'd missed that one.

I'm a very happy bunny now and so is my copy of Photo Mechanic. 

[Mario]

That's good news. This should be the default setting, which would avoid such headaches and support tickets 

[happysnapper]