Is it possible to link a Keyword to a XMP field or vice versa?

[Damit]

After reading the Thesaurus section, in detail, at length and more than once, I believe there is no way to link a keyword, such as Claude Monet to and XMP field, specifically XMP::iptcExt\ArtworkOrObjectAOCreator\ArtworkCreator\0 or vice versa. I think Links, like Synonyms only work with Keywords, so it seems it is not possible. Am I correct?

It would be great if XMP fields could be linked to keywords, especially reciprocally, kind of like you can do with people. That way if I put in Cluade Monet as the artwork creator, IMatch would add the keyword Claude Monet.

[Mario]

I think Links, like Synonyms only work with Keywords, so it seems it is not possible. Am I correct?

Yes.

It would be great if XMP fields could be linked to keywords, especially reciprocally, kind of like you can do with people. That way if I put in Cluade Monet as the artwork creator, IMatch would add the keyword Claude Monet.

Something that might help with that might be under development for IMatch 2023.

Note: Always use the feature request board for posting feature requests or ideas.
I will not search in General Discussion topics for feature requests. So if you want to be heard, use the proper board.

[Damit]

I think Links, like Synonyms only work with Keywords, so it seems it is not possible. Am I correct?

Yes.

It would be great if XMP fields could be linked to keywords, especially reciprocally, kind of like you can do with people. That way if I put in Cluade Monet as the artwork creator, IMatch would add the keyword Claude Monet.

Something that might help with that might be under development for IMatch 2023.

Note: Always use the feature request board for posting feature requests or ideas.
I will not search in General Discussion topics for feature requests. So if you want to be heard, use the proper board.

Great! Hopefully this comes to fruition. Thanks for the instruction; I am ware of that forum, but I did not put in the feature request because I wanted to confirm it was not possible before I did so. I will put it in today or tomorrow. I have refrained from making feature requests until I become more familiar with the program, but I feel confident that this one I can make.

[sinus]

After reading the Thesaurus section, in detail, at length and more than once, I believe there is no way to link a keyword, such as Claude Monet to and XMP field, specifically XMP::iptcExt\ArtworkOrObjectAOCreator\ArtworkCreator\0 or vice versa

Of course you could always create a Metadata Template for this.
Means, fill out you Art-metadata-field (or/and every other metadata-field), and push a button (e.g. favourites), what does execute the metadata template.
In the template you have decided, that the data in the "art-field" should be merged to the keyword-field, and you are done.
Means, add Claude Monet into the wished field, push the button and Claude Monet is added to your keyword field (NOT to the thesaurus).

If you have more then one name, add a semicolon between:Claude Monet;Henry de Toulouse Lautrec and you will end with two keywords (merged to already used keywords):
Claude Monet
Henry de Toulouse Lautrec

Means in the workflow: add e.g. names for 20 images, select all, push the button and you are done.

Sorry, if I understood something wrong. But this is a good way to go.
But of course, I am sure, the stuff, what Mario has planed for 23, is even quicker (maybe automatically).

[Mario]

The AutoFill feature in IMatch 2023 will deal with this in an automated fashion.
See https://www.photools.com/community/index.php/topic,11174.msg89375.html#msg89375 ff. for some more insights in how I have designed this.

[Damit]

 

Of course you could always create a Metadata Template for this.
Means, fill out you Art-metadata-field (or/and every other metadata-field), and push a button (e.g. favourites), what does execute the metadata template.
In the template you have decided, that the data in the "art-field" should be merged to the keyword-field, and you are done.
Means, add Claude Monet into the wished field, push the button and Claude Monet is added to your keyword field (NOT to the thesaurus).

If you have more then one name, add a semicolon between:Claude Monet;Henry de Toulouse Lautrec and you will end with two keywords (merged to already used keywords):
Claude Monet
Henry de Toulouse Lautrec

Means in the workflow: add e.g. names for 20 images, select all, push the button and you are done.

Sorry, if I understood something wrong. But this is a good way to go.
But of course, I am sure, the stuff, what Mario has planed for 23, is even quicker (maybe automatically).

Thank you so much for your input.  It is good to know that this can be accomplished now.  I found it odd that there was no way to do it.  However, maybe I will just wait until Mario comes out with 2023 and just keep a list of tags I want to link in this way.

One question, you mentioned that the Metadata Template would not add the keyword in the thesaurus, but if the tag already existed in the Thesaurus, I assume it would link the two?

The AutoFill feature in IMatch 2023 will deal with this in an automated fashion.
See https://www.photools.com/community/index.php/topic,11174.msg89375.html#msg89375 ff. for some more insights in how I have designed this.

This is very exciting! Any ideas on when 2023 will be making it's debut?

[sinus]

One question, you mentioned that the Metadata Template would not add the keyword in the thesaurus, but if the tag already existed in the Thesaurus, I assume it would link the two?      

Hm, to be honest, I do not really understand, what you mean with "link".

Some years ago, I worked a lot with keywords, synonyms and all the stuff. But not more  in the last years, hence it could be, that I am not on the highest "level of knowing". 

Say, you have a metadata-field called "Art-name". 
You enter there "Picasso;Monet;Toulouse Lautrec;Hodler"

Further, you have created a metadata, what does put the value from this field into the keyword-field ({File.MD.XMP::Lightroom\hierarchicalSubject\HierarchicalSubject\0}).

Now, you let run this template. IMatch does look into the field, pulls out every value before a semicolon and pushes this value as a keyword in the keyword-field. 
Because you do this without the keyword-panel (what is specialy designed for keywording), IMatch does not look into the thesaurus. (bear in mind, I am not 100% sure).
Hence all synonyms, what could behind such a keyword (like artist, art...) would not be added to keywords.

The same is true, if you goes into the keyword-field and changes a keyword. 
Say, you have there written
Lautrec;monet;renoir;Ortschaft|Switzerland|Kanton Aargau|Egliswil

Now, you goes into this metadata-field and changes renoir to "Auguste Renoir" and deletes monet.
If you now looks at the keywords in the category-panel, the keyword "renoir" would be not more there (except you had other files with this keyword and you have in the preferences, that empy cats should be deleted), but a new one would be there "Auguste Renoir".

This simply on the fact, that you changed something in the metada-field {File.MD.XMP::Lightroom\hierarchicalSubject\HierarchicalSubject\0}.
Now IMatch would do a lot in the background (therefore the changes takes sometimes some time), depending on some preferences you have choosen.
For example it flattens these keywords and put them into another keyword-field {File.MD.XMP::dc\subject\Subject\0}.

If you would enter "Artist|Claude Monet|France" it would split this into 3 keywords
Artist
Claude Monet
France

IMatch does a lot in the background, but (I believe) in all this cases, where you changes something in the metafield directly (by hand or with a template), the thesaurus is not touched. 

The thesaurus is specially designed to use it with the keyword-panel, and finally this panel is specially designed to deal with keywords.

btw, you can see in my attachement 1 an example of one of my templates.
It fills the keyword-field {File.MD.XMP::Lightroom\hierarchicalSubject\HierarchicalSubject\0} with these keywords:

4 numbers of the filename 
Archiv
hr


The second attachement shows another template. This is a place, where I do often take pictures. In this case I simply let run this template and it writes into the keyword-field (hierarchical):
Ortschaft
Switzerland
Kanton Aargau
Aarau 5004
Delfterstrasse 42 / 4. Stock

and all these will create a keyword and added to all the others in the keywords. You can see this in the attachement 3, shows keywords in the category-panel. 

I personally do a lot with metadata-template, because they are very powerful, beause you can also use variables. (like take 4 letters from the filename).

But as Mario pointed out, 2023 IMatch does always change and create new possibilities. 

[Mario]

There are no "links" between keywords and the thesaurus. What would these links do?

Adding keywords to files not via the Keywords Panel will not add new keywords to the thesaurus. This could cause a lot of havoc very quickly. And in the KW panel it is optional if new keywords you type in are added to the thesaurus.

The thesaurus should be treated as a carefully controlled vocabulary for keywords and other tags. You want to avoid accidentally changing the controlled vocabulary. Changes should be done deliberately - else the controlled vocabulary may become useless very quickly.
You don't want to pollute your controlled vocabulary with stray keywords you only add to some files.

Note that you can always re-import keywords from your files into the Thesaurus via the Thesaurus Manager. Usually one does that only once, to fill the thesaurus initially from existing keywords.

[Tveloso]

So I'm just thinking out loud here...but reading Markus' posts got me thinking, "wouldn't it be cool if Metadata Templates gave us a configuration option to set the condition under which the MD template would actually do its work?"...

Currently, if we run a metadata template, it unconditionally does what we have configured.  But it might be nice to be able to set the condition that must be true, in order for the updates configured in the template to actually impact the selected files.

Of course, an answer to that, would simply be to first use the powerful search, and filter features, that IMatch offers, to first set the scope, so the MD template is working only with the files that meet the desired condition...(but still, it might be nice to have that condition "built into the MD Template" itself).

It may also be that the IMatch 2023 feature that Mario linked to above already is essentially this...(it's really a sort of "Metadata Splasher", isn't it?).  But IMatch already give us multiple options to achieve a given result (with maybe subtle differences between them), and maybe this could be another?...

It seems that the new feature is triggered by a current change to Metadata, and the "Conditional MD Template", would allow for an after-the-fact multi-field update.  It could even be used at ingest, to automatically populate disparate Metadata fields, based upon the values already present in one or more other fields...

[Damit]

Thank you so much Sinus, Mario for your input! Tveloso, I like your thinking, but I think the feature Mario described will do what you wish.

Hm, to be honest, I do not really understand, what you mean with "link".

I just meant that if you had already defined the keyword in the thesaurus, that IMatch would assign that keyword to the file when you ran the template using XMPs to propagate text to those keywords.  So, if I had a Keyword set up in my Thesaurus called "In Pic|Mario" and I directed the template to copy values from the "XMP field Person In Image" to "In Pic," that IMatch would use that "Mario," that currently exists.

I assume so, but I guess only tests will tell. However, considering that Mario is hard at work on a feature that will do just this, perhaps I will just wait for it and then run it on existing files so I can propagate text found in pre-defined Metadata fields to Keywords.

If you are wondering why I would want an "In Pic" parent keyword instead of just using that which is in the XMP field, I also what to tag photos with people present when the picture was taken, rather than just those pictured in the photo, and I want to differentiate between them.

[Mario]

Note: The tag Person In Image is automatically filled by IMatch when you assign persons to faces. You should not directly manipulate this tag if you use face recognition in IMatch.
Just to mention this.