Writeback issue

[Germ]

Hi folks,

In my database I have an image that has these keywords:
======== E:/Foto's/2010/04/09/_MG_0935-2.CR2
[IPTC]          Keywords                        : Balans, Nederland, Plaatsen, Bunnik, Duko Mulder, Personen, Bunnik Algemeen
======== E:/Foto's/2010/04/09/_MG_0935-2.xmp
[XMP-dc]        Subject                         : Balans, Nederland, Plaatsen, Bunnik, Duko Mulder, Personen, Bunnik Algemeen
[XMP-lr]        Hierarchical Subject            : Plaatsen|Nederland|Bunnik|, Personen|Balans|Duko Mulder, Plaatsen|Nederland|Bunnik|Bunnik Algemeen
    2 image files read

First it was assigned to Plaatsen|Nederland|Bunnik|.
Later I made a new keyword under this one: Bunnik Algemeen and I assigned the file to it by drag and drop.
Next I write back the keywords to the file. I expected Plaatsen|Nederland|Bunnik| to be gone, but that was not the case. The keywords in the file are still the same.
After reading back from the file the file is attached back to the original keyword: Plaatsen|Nederland|Bunnik| as well as the new keyword Plaatsen|Nederland|Bunnik|Bunnik Algemeen.
This is not what I had in mind to happen.
What am I missing here?


Regards from Holland

Germ

[Mario]

This sounds like you have assigned the file to both.
When you say "Drag & Drop" you mean that you assign keywords to files in the Category View?
The proper way to work with keywords is the Keywords Panel. There you can also see which keywords are in your files, etc.
If you really only want to work with @Keywords categories, use the Category Panel (not the Category View). This panel also shows you which categories are assigned to your files.

[Germ]

Hi Mario,

I have used, the category panel, the keywords panel AND the category view.
I iMatch I see de desired effect (i.e. removal of a keyword).
But when clicking the "pencil" to write back to the image and xmp files, the keyword is not deleted from these files. I think that my problem lies there, hence the title.
And after the write-back, the read-back follows where the image and XMP files are re-read and the keyword that was removed for these files is re-added to the keyword that they were removed from.
This makes that keyword a very "sticky" one.

[Mario]

By default IMatch synchronizes XMP back into legacy IPTC during write-back. If does this only when it detects existing IPTC data in the file, and this is determined by looking at certain IPTC fields that are required. You are dealing with CR2 files, which usually don't contain IPTC metadata. Maybe the files have only a partial IPTC record and this confuses the write-back.

Please provide a sample file and let us know your Edit > Preferences > Metadata and Metadata 2 settings if they are not standard.

[Germ]

Hi Mario,

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.
A thorough spring-clean of the metadata in de the files helped to solve this problem.
The combination of iMatch and ExifTool proved to be is very powerful in this matter.
As far as I can tell at the moment everything runs ok here  .
Thanks for your help .

[Mario]

Sounds good. What did you do to the files to fix it?

[Germ]

Hi Mario,

For o couple of filetypes I simply forced the use of the xmp files.
During the years lots of metadata were accumulated in various ways in the image files.
In the raw files themselves as well as in XMP, or even in both.
Lightroom, Photoshop, ACDSee, Photo Supreme etc etc all left their marks. 
I deleted a lot of that "debree" using iMatch and ExifTool and left  only the latest keywords -that I actually want at this time- only in  -as much as possible- in the xmp files at the smallest number of locations in the there. That means that a lot of metadata were eliminated.
There was also a keyword like "thing..." in iMatch which translated in the XMP files as "thing|||". Of course the trailing -empty- keywords do not exist.
Perhaps it is a good idea to declare the "." as a reserved character that is not accepted in keywords.
At the moment the program behaves like expected. So, al in all, i'm quite happy now with iMatch .

I believe iMatch and I will become close friends 

[Mario]

Perhaps it is a good idea to declare the "." as a reserved character that is not accepted in keywords.

The . can be configured in IMatch as a hierarchical separator, in order to support the various 'store hierarchies in keywords' schemes users, scripts and applications have come up with over the past decare: Edit > Preferences > Metadata.  If your keywords contain . as 'normal' characters, disable it as a hierarchy separator in IMatch. Or IMatch will consider a keyword like IMatch... as a keyword with hierarchy and maybe this gives some side effects... but IMatch usually ignores empty keywords and levels...

IMatch  5 has the tools and features to fix your metadata and to properly synchronize it across all standards. It may be a bit of work if some of your files are in a mess, but it's a good idea for long-term archival and cross-application / platform metadata management.