First Writeback of imported photo clears XPKeywords

[joe]

Hi. Is this expected? I currently have identical keywords written in 3 locations (due to prior tools) - EXIF XPKeywords, IPTC Keywords and XMP Subject. The XPKeywords is the only one that gets cleared. Thanks.

[Mario]

XP Keywords where a proprietary way to store keywords in a custom namespace in XMP.
Microsoft supported that for a while in Windows Explorer in Windows XP and later, back in the day. And maybe some "home" photo products.

Why Microsoft did not use the standardized and official keywords tags in XMP:dc-Subject and XMP-lr:hierarchicalSubject and IPTC:keywords - who knows?
Probably just another attempt at customer lock-in by forcing metadata into proprietary formats. Or the common don't care attitude we see so often with metadata. Customers only figure out this kind of problem when they switch to another software.

IMatch supports standardized legacy IPTC keywords, standardized XMP DublinCore Keywords and XMP hierarchical keywords. Internally, IMatch only works with the flexible hierarchical keywords and "flattens" them during write back and mapping into the corresponding legacy IPTC and XMP keyword / subject tags.
No proprietary Microsoft XP keywords. No support, neither by IMatch nor ExifTool. Don't use these.

See also Metadata for Beginners for related basic information.