Encoding problem?

[ArtemB]

Hi,

I have a problem with the copyright symbol in the Copyright field of the metadata.

When I use PM on my Windows PC to update the metadata, I use Alt[0169] to input the copyright symbol.
When I open the files later in NX or in Photoshop, I find a different symbol in front of the copyright symbol.
(f.i. a capital A with an accent on top..)

Does anyone have an explanation for this?
I can remove it manually, but this is a lot of work, and sometimes gives me an error in the metadata.
So I am looking for the reason and a way to avoid this problem.


Cheers,
Boris.

[Kirk Baker]

Boris,

I have a problem with the copyright symbol in the Copyright field of the metadata.

When I use PM on my Windows PC to update the metadata, I use Alt[0169] to input the copyright symbol.
When I open the files later in NX or in Photoshop, I find a different symbol in front of the copyright symbol.
(f.i. a capital A with an accent on top..)

Does anyone have an explanation for this?
I can remove it manually, but this is a lot of work, and sometimes gives me an error in the metadata.
So I am looking for the reason and a way to avoid this problem.

What encoding do you have PM set to use?  If you're entirely Windows-based, you should use one of the following encodings:

Microsoft Latin1+Euro
Microsoft Central Europe
Latin1 Western European

If you use XMP instead of IPTC then the encoding will always be UTF-8 which will allow any characters to be represented equally.

You should be able to use the IPTC Stationery Pad to correct this issue on your photos.

-Kirk

[ArtemB]

Hi Kirk,


Thanks for your info.

I do use XMP, but the copyright info is an IPTC field.
I had the encoding on Mac Roman, but thought this would be no issue as I checked 'write as Unicode'.

Maybe some misunderstanding from my side?


Cheers,
Boris.

[Kirk Baker]

Boris,

Thanks for your info.

I do use XMP, but the copyright info is an IPTC field.
I had the encoding on Mac Roman, but thought this would be no issue as I checked 'write as Unicode'.

Maybe some misunderstanding from my side?

Photoshop definitely does not handle Unicode IPTC records properly.  It sounds like NX doesn't handle them properly either.  The copyright symbol is represented by two bytes in UTF-8 Unicode which is why you're seeing that additional character preceding your copyright symbol.

So you'll need to not write as Unicode and choose a more appropriate encoding if you want to use IPTC.  Or you can just go XMP only.  The copyright field is definitely represented in XMP.

-Kirk