Author Topic: IPTC metadata doesn't show up in Photo Mechanic 5  (Read 1791 times)

Offline chg

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IPTC metadata doesn't show up in Photo Mechanic 5
« on: May 12, 2015, 11:25:18 PM »
Hi. I have a problem with IPTC data in Photo Mechanic. So on our website people can add/remove IPTC tags to their photos. We then use http://www.blitline.com/ to process those images and actually save the data in the file. Lots of our users get photos from the webpage and then they edit them in Photo Mechanic. The problem is that the tags don't show in Photo Mechanic. They work ok in Preview on OSX and in any other application I've tested.

I've attached an example of image that has iptc metadata, that doesn't show in Photo Mechanic.
Here's the screenshot showing the problem:


Can you help with making them compatible with your application? 
Thanks!

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Offline Kirk Baker

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Re: IPTC metadata doesn't show up in Photo Mechanic 5
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2015, 11:43:27 PM »
Hi. I have a problem with IPTC data in Photo Mechanic. So on our website people can add/remove IPTC tags to their photos. We then use http://www.blitline.com/ to process those images and actually save the data in the file. Lots of our users get photos from the webpage and then they edit them in Photo Mechanic. The problem is that the tags don't show in Photo Mechanic. They work ok in Preview on OSX and in any other application I've tested.

I've attached an example of image that has iptc metadata, that doesn't show in Photo Mechanic.
Here's the screenshot showing the problem:


Can you help with making them compatible with your application? 
Thanks!

The problem is that the image has both legacy IPTC and XMP in it and the two formats are out of sync.  Only the legacy IPTC data has your information in it and the XMP metadata is completely missing your information.  You can force PM to prefer legacy IPTC (read IPTC first) and read XMP second if you like, but a better solution for the future (to future-proof the content your website produces) would be to put the same fields into XMP as well.

IPTC is all but dead.  XMP is the present and the future of metadata for images (and video).

Also, IPTC rarely gets internationalization right.  I notice in your screenshot of other apps that the accented text is wrong.  XMP is unicode-based and always gets accented characters right.

-Kirk

Offline chg

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Re: IPTC metadata doesn't show up in Photo Mechanic 5
« Reply #2 on: May 13, 2015, 02:14:17 AM »
Thanks for this very helpful answer!