IPTC Category and Sub Category

[Cooper]

Hi,

I just downloaded the trial of Imatch5 as I am looking to replace Lightroom 6 as my library or at least the way I enter the metadata to be published online.  Lightroom is very clumbsy with this and forces you to keep switching to different panels or use addons which did as I needed but it greatly impacted the performance. So far I am liking what I see with imatch with a lot more features for this and customization.   I have created a custom panel and added most things I need however two very important ones are missing. I cannot find the IPTC category and sub category options.  I use these to organize my photos online Category is well the Category and Sub or Supplemental category I use as the primary filter. Eg Category=Birds   Sub Category=Warbler.  I also did not see an option for caption, I could use description to accomplish the same thing but it would be nice to avoid having to mass edit all my  other photos to match, also a lot of web galleries out there use caption by default for the description.

Anyone know if these tags are hidden somewhere or how do I add them to my custom panel?

Thanks

[Mario]

Adobe often uses their own names for established metadata tags. This then always causes confusion once users are looking outside the Adobe world and wonder where their metadata is...

What Adobe names "Caption", the XMP metadata standards and all other application, including IMatch call Description. The metadata tag is XMP-dc:Description.
What Adobe names "Creator" all other software names "Author" - because that's what the field is named in the standard.
Sometimes Adobe names the same metadata differently in different applications.

I suggest you switch the IMatch Metadata Panel to the Default layout and then fill out every field for a test image. Use names you can recognize, e.g. enter "Description" for the field description. Then switch to Lr, use the "Reload Metadata" command to update the Lr catalog with the new data and check which data Adobe displays in which field. This way you can find out where Adobe names metadata fields different than the standard. IMatch always uses the official name, or the official translated name where available.

2. IPTC (IIM) metadata data is legacy. It has been retired by the IPTC committee 10 years ago in favor of the IPTC namespace (IPTCCore and various extensions) that is part of the XMP metadata standard. During this move, the IPTC created many new fields, and dropped some old ones. The Category and Sub-Category fields were deprecated in 2005 already. If you still work with software which relies on legacy IPTC data and deprecated fields, be warned. Most of current software out there does not longer recognize these fields.

The Metadata Panel in IMatch allows you to show all metadata contained in your images. You can use the "Browser" layout to see all data in your files.

And you can create a custom layout which includes even legacy IPTC metadata. This allows you to see and even enter the old category and supplemental categories. To add these tags to a custom layout, go to the "Search all Tags" in the Tag Manager dialog and then enter iptc for the group of tags to show. This shows you the legacy IPTC Application Record right at the top. From there you can add the fields you are interested in to your custom layout.

Please note that none of the deprecated tags has a counterpart in XMP (see the IPTC web site for full details, and http://www.photometadata.org/meta-resources-field-guide-to-metadata). This document http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/iptc_core_mapped.pdf explains how fields from the legacy IPTC format where mapped to XMP.

Note: IMatch by default only updates legacy IPTC data in files when it exists, but does not create new legacy IPTC data for new files. This is in accordance with the Metadata Working Group standards. New files (everything after 2005, actually) should not contain legacy IPTC data anymore. XMP is the metadata format to use.

[Cooper]

Thanks Mario I now have the Category fields added to my custom panel.

I use wordpress for my website with a plugin that auto applies the IPTC data for the taxonomy when I upload the photo so they are automatically organized in the gallery by Categories and also with keyword filters. Doing it this way saves so much time and effort and its critical for me and my workflow.

I am shocked to see they removed such an important field and simply dont understand why.  I see no other replacement that could fill its shoes.   The only other thing I can think of if I stop using those fields is remap eg Country to be the new Category and then City to Sub category.   At least that way the filled in fields would be available in software that does not read legacy IPTC.  Still this just makes no sense to me why it was done and why I should have to go about it this way.  Its as if they expect keywords to fill the shoes but that is just messy and would cause conflicts with other images that should not be included that would share the same keyword. A possible workaround with that could be making a unique keyword field eg Birds-Cat  but then when typing in the keywords you would get two suggestions causing extra clicks and time spent applying metadata. I also see another problem with this method, if using filter by keywords in a gallery usually it shows all keywords and those extras may not be a desired ones to have showing.

For now this works though, but if thats the way things are going I may have to figure out something new down the road.  So thanks for keeping legacy support, looks like I will be switching over to Imatch for the metadata part of my workflow.

[Mario]

The IPTC writes:

Early versions of IIM included the Datasets 2:15 "Category" and 2:20 "Supplemental Category". But these two fields were replaced in IIM version 4 (released in 1999) by the Dataset 2:12 "Subject Reference" which must be populated by values from the IPTC Subject NewsCodes controlled vocabulary.

Link

so the field Category and Supplemental Category were deprecated in 1999 already. And this means they should not have been used after that. But many software products and services still relies on legacy IPTC data, and even on IPTC fields deprecated for almost 20 years. That's just how it is. DAM products like IMatch often manage image libraries which span several decades, which also means to support very old and outdated standards (if possible). But your WordPress template/plug-in should really make a move to something that is more reliable and future-proof than legacy IIM IPTC data. It's 10 years out-of-date by now...