Small accident

[HansEverts]

I had a small accident for which I would appreciate some advise.

My old workflow was from NEF, where I only edited, to JPG, where I added keywords and all the rest. The NEFs stayed outside of IMatch.

Only in IM5 I have decided to include the NEFs. For new images I do the keywording now with the NEFs and a master/version relationship does the rest. So far so good, except that I just discover that all the older NEFs of course also their metadata exported to the JPGs, and if their metadata fields were empty, well they exported empty fields. I created relations only for 2013, so the damage is limited, but still....

I want to do the following and just want to check to make sure it makes sense:
1) I switch off the relations until further notice
2) I look for copies of the images that still had keywords, etc.
3) I use them to replace the images with lost keywords
4) Now comes the tricky part. I temporarily make those JPG into master and the NEFs into version and export the lost metadata from the first to the last. (Don't worry, I have already learned the hard way to be very selective what JPG data can be exported to NEF)
5) When that is done, I reestablish the old relationships

Does that sound logical or are there any major omissions.

Thanks

[Mario]

So, basically you accidentally wiped out metadata in JPEG files by propagating from almost empty NEF files?

Why don't you just restore the blank files? We all work only with copies of our files with the Beta of IMatch so there cannot be real harm done. See also the big scary warnings in the Beta Tester Guide in the IMatch help.

If you worked with your original files despite the warning, maybe just use ExifTool from the command line to copy over metadata from JPEG to NEF files. Might be easier than trying to do it in IMatch.

The ExifTool user forum has many posts and FAQs about how to do this. If unsure, post a question there. Something like "I need to restore metadata in my NEF files from metadata in my JPEG files".

[HansEverts]

So, basically you accidentally wiped out metadata in JPEG files by propagating from almost empty NEF files?

Yes Mario, I did, I am the only one to blame and believe me, posting it was painful enough. Ne need for you to push the nail even deeper (french expression, but clear enough).

At this very moment IMatch is importing the backup images and transferring the keywords to the NEF versions.

It is a good reminder to be meticulous and to test anything before putting it into production.

[Mario]

It is a good reminder to be meticulous and to test anything before putting it into production.

Wise words. That's why I stress it so much in the help. If a user is playing with versions, propagation and all the other features in IMatch, it's wide to first try it with test images. Not an IMatch problem, though. I recently lost a set of files in the RAW processor of the major vendor, for whatever reason. 6 out of 10 files corrupted after saving them...and now they want money for an upgrade :-((

[Ferdinand]

I recently lost a set of files in the RAW processor of the major vendor, for whatever reason. 6 out of 10 files corrupted after saving them...and now they want money for an upgrade :-((

Eh?  Most RAW converters don't touch the RAW file.  It's tempting to assume that "major vendor" means Adobe, but I don't see how either LR or ACR could do this.  Must have been Capture I guess.  It would be nice to have some hints so that we can avoid this product.

[Mario]

I don't use Capture.

[herman]

Eh?  Most RAW converters don't touch the RAW file.

FWIW, I have lost raw files myself when LR decided to crash and in that crash trashed some of my raws while it was writing it's housekeeping data to these files.
I must admit it were DNG files, but that happens to be the raw format of my camera.
It is just one of the reasons I developed an allergy for Adobe software 

[Ferdinand]

What format were you editing Mario?