For some uploads (e.g. to Smugmug) I need to change a picture's categories into keywords using the file's existing category assignments.
In IM 3 there was a script that could do this, What is the best way to do this in IM 5?
thanks, Richard
IMatch has the special @Keywords category hierarchy for this purpose. This hierarchy automatically maps between IMatch categories and hierarchical keywords. If you use this, you don't need to manually copy categories into keywords. This is the reason why the script is no longer needed and does not exist anymore. It's fully automatic now.
If you really must create keywords from native IMatch outside of @Keywords you can use a Metadata Template. Depending on your category layout and how you want to structure the keywords in the file you need to use the {File.Categories} variable as the source and the XMP hierarchicalSubject as the target. IMatch then takes care that the keywords are also copied into XMP subject and optional legacy IPTC keywords (I think smugmug still uses these?)
You have not specific about how you need to map your hierarchical keywords into flat keywords, if you need the full path, parts of the path or on the bottom level etc. All this can be achieved with the File.Categories variable and some formatting functions to separate out the part you want.
I'm not familiar with the SmugMug script, but there was at least one other upload script (for Coppermine) that could create a temporary copy of an image and insert categories as keywords on the fly. This would also require a script of some sort in IMatch 5. I know that there is some interest in a SmugMug upload script, but no-one has written one yet. What I would do at the moment is create copies for upload and propagate categories etc to them and then do as Mario says and use a metadata template to write categories as keywords and then upload.