ACDSee Pro 3 Beta - General Discussion

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Batch setting IPTC data

[closed] (9 posts)

  • Roger Mardon
    Member

    Batch setting of IPTC data seems a bit inadequate to me. If you batch set e.g. the copyright notice wrongly and need to correct it, inputting the new corrected data adds it to the existing rather than overwriting it. As there is no means of batch deleting the incorrect data first, this means that changes have to be made to image properties one by one which could take an age if you've done hundreds in one go - unless I've missed something.

    Posted On May 28, 2009 - 07:35 PM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • StefanH
    Focus Group

    If you delete the '*' in the input field, the original data is deleted.

    Posted On May 29, 2009 - 08:28 AM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Roger Mardon
    Member

    StefanH said:

    If you delete the '*' in the input field, the original data is deleted.

    Can you confirm that this actually works on your Pro3 because it doesn't on mine. Looks as if it might be a bug for me to report in the other forum.

     

    Posted On May 29, 2009 - 06:55 PM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Marc Sabatella
    Moderator

    It works for me using Pro 3, Bach Set Information, and the IPTC/Copyright field. The EXIF/Copyright field presents problems, which I would venture to guess have to do with the fact that the IPTC Copyright field actually takes precedence over the EXIF Copyright field in the XMP specs.  I don't really understand the issue fully, but it seems the XMP folks more or less obsoleted certain EXIF fields by decreeing that corresponding IPTC fields should be used instead, so writing a value to one of those ITPC fields atomatically writes it to the corresponding EXIF field as well.

    EDITED: OK, actually, it *sort of* works for me.  It actually doesn't work to *just" erase the "*".  But it works to erase it *and* replace it with a new value.

    Posted On May 29, 2009 - 11:18 PM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Roger Mardon
    Member

    Thanks, Marc. I haven't tried all tabs/fields but it works on the Credit tab except for the Photographer field. I wonder if that was deliberate and, if so, why.

    Posted On June 1, 2009 - 02:13 PM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • David Grant
    Member

    I am also having problems batch setting the IPTC information in the photographer field. I wonder if this is a bug or a default setting. It seems like this is the only field that is resisting any change. I've tried others with no problems.

    I made the mistake of importing photos from other photographers on a group trip and forgetting to change the photographer in the default settings when I imported the photos. Now when I try to change it in the IPTC data, the program just simply refuses. Any suggestions out there?

    Posted On June 11, 2009 - 10:17 AM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Marc Sabatella
    Moderator

    Are you using Batch Set Information, and entering the new info in place of the "*"?  What file format?  I just tried it and it seemed to work for me.

    Posted On June 13, 2009 - 01:32 AM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Roger Mardon
    Member

    Marc,

    Yes, Batch Set Information, new data in place of the '*',  JPEGs.  I've tried again and it still refuses to replace the Photographer information.

    Roger

    Posted On June 14, 2009 - 08:14 PM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

  • Marc Sabatella
    Moderator

    I was able to reproduce this with a JPEG file.

    I'm wondering if this isn't yet another unfortunate side-effect of the XMP folks' ill-advised (IMHO) decision to use have IPTC and EXIF fields start being aliases for each other instead of being distainct fields.  I already knew that the IPTC Caption and EXIF Description fields were defined by XMP to map the same XMP field, meaning that changes to one also affected the other, and attempts to change the in the "wrong" order didn't work as expected.  It now appears that IPTC Photographer and EXIF Artist field are similarly related.  And as was the case the caption/description, it seems the only (?) solution is to always write *both* values together.  I just verified that writing to EXIF Artist as well as IPTC Photographer *does* work.

    I still don't understand the XMP spec well enough to say how muchof this behavior is *required* by the standard and how much of it ACDSee could chose to implement differently.  Given the number of people surprised by these issues, I am of the opinion that ACDSee should do as much as possible to reduce this without actually violating the standard.  And that might include providing an option - perhaps even enabled by default - to have writes to IPTC Caption and IPTC Photographer automatically propagate to the corresponding EXIF fields.  Some people would still be surprised/dismayed by this, but at least it would eliminate these weird cases where sometimes a write appears to have no effect.

    Posted On June 15, 2009 - 04:48 PM (5 months ago) (Permalink to this post)

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