Delete embedded IPTC/XMP while conserving sidecar

[michael33]

Good morning PM-Team,

because I finally changed my database, I did the following to my archived files:
I showed my whole archive of NEF files in PM and selected them all. Then I used that wonderfull "Reverd TIFF Based Raw to Original" command. Now I have all my raw files and their connected XMP sidecar file in the appropriate folder. Perfect!
After I developed an older NEF to JPG in NX2, I realised that still some information is contained in the NEF itself (NX2 disregards sidecar files) as information was shown in the JPG.

As far as I understand the manual of PM, is it correct that the "Revert TIFF Based Raw to Original" only removes the metadata that was written by PM? On my mind, that would mean, that after I ingested some metadata in PM and than opened that file in NX2 to do the development, NX2 writes that given metadata itself again? After that, the "Revert TIFF..." command would become useless as this metadata was now written by NX2 and therefore would stay in the NEF even after applying the command.

Do you have a better idea than to go to every single folder, move the sidecarfiles to a another folder, apply "Delete Metadata" (IPTC and XMP marked) and move the sidecar files back?
The "Delete Metadata" toll would be a little bit more flexible if you could make suboptions under XMP where you could tell the program to delete the embedded and/or sidecar xmp. That would be my solution in here (maybe next update ;-) ).

As my new database only takes care about sidecar files it really is necessary to get rid of the embedded metadata. As you never quite know what kind of metadata other programs use, i really want to have only one source of information.

Thanks for your help and your great piece of software

Best regards from Germany
Michael

[Kirk Baker]

Michael,

because I finally changed my database, I did the following to my archived files:
I showed my whole archive of NEF files in PM and selected them all. Then I used that wonderfull "Reverd TIFF Based Raw to Original" command. Now I have all my raw files and their connected XMP sidecar file in the appropriate folder. Perfect!
After I developed an older NEF to JPG in NX2, I realised that still some information is contained in the NEF itself (NX2 disregards sidecar files) as information was shown in the JPG.

As far as I understand the manual of PM, is it correct that the "Revert TIFF Based Raw to Original" only removes the metadata that was written by PM? On my mind, that would mean, that after I ingested some metadata in PM and than opened that file in NX2 to do the development, NX2 writes that given metadata itself again? After that, the "Revert TIFF..." command would become useless as this metadata was now written by NX2 and therefore would stay in the NEF even after applying the command.

Do you have a better idea than to go to every single folder, move the sidecarfiles to a another folder, apply "Delete Metadata" (IPTC and XMP marked) and move the sidecar files back?
The "Delete Metadata" toll would be a little bit more flexible if you could make suboptions under XMP where you could tell the program to delete the embedded and/or sidecar xmp. That would be my solution in here (maybe next update ;-) ).

As my new database only takes care about sidecar files it really is necessary to get rid of the embedded metadata. As you never quite know what kind of metadata other programs use, i really want to have only one source of information.

I'm not sure that PM will delete embedded XMP that was created by Capture NX2 at all.  Have you tried it?  What database are you using that ignores embedded XMP?

I don't see any issue of having both embedded XMP and a sidecar XMP file as long as both pieces of data are kept in sync.  PM will do this for you each time you update the metadata with either the IPTC Info dialog or the IPTC Stationery Pad.  All you would have to do is apply an IPTC Stationery Pad (just update/clear some unused field) after working with Capture NX2 and PM will sync the two pieces of metadata.

Does having embedded XMP trip up your database?

-Kirk

[michael33]

Michael,

I'm not sure that PM will delete embedded XMP that was created by Capture NX2 at all.  Have you tried it?  What database are you using that ignores embedded XMP?

I don't see any issue of having both embedded XMP and a sidecar XMP file as long as both pieces of data are kept in sync.  PM will do this for you each time you update the metadata with either the IPTC Info dialog or the IPTC Stationery Pad.  All you would have to do is apply an IPTC Stationery Pad (just update/clear some unused field) after working with Capture NX2 and PM will sync the two pieces of metadata.

Does having embedded XMP trip up your database?

-Kirk

Kirk,

yes I tried it and it seems that PM does not touch the embedded metadata embedded by NX2 (at least with the "Revert TIFF based Raw to Original" tool -> Delete Metadata works but than the sidecar will be deleted too).
Presently I try to get my grips onto AtomicView, which reads embedded XMP but definetly only writes back sidecars to Raw files.

What I try to avoid is the following scenario: Working on my growing AtomicView catalogue I might change metadata like keywords even on my older files. Especially with large collections of files that are hosted on different directories or drives, keeping sidecar and embedded metadata in sync manually with PM seems uncomfortable to me (even though I agree, that it is possible and mainly your described procedure is, what I did for the last months).
The problem than is, that if I develop a NEF with CNX2 to a JPG version, CNX2 will ignore the sidecar and reads the embedded XMP, which might be outdated but will be written into the JPG. That might cause confusion (for example on batch runs with lots of NEFs where only some NEFs contain outdated embeded metadata). Therefore I would rather like to get a JPG with blank metadata, and sync this JPG´s metadata and the corresponding NEF´s metadata in the database (or if practically with PM). Those JPGs with blank metadata, I could even filter for (in PM or the database).  

Maybe I just think too complicated  

[Hayo Baan]

Maybe I just think too complicated   .

Perhaps you do 

I too "develop" my NEFs with NX2, and even though I don't use a cataloguing solution yet (waiting patiently on PM to fill this in later), I still might be able give you some tips here.

First of all, I NEVER store or archive JPGs derived from NEFs; the embedded jpg preview is more than adequate for this purpose (in fact it is a 90+% quality jpg). I use this embedded jpg for all my web exporting, creating contact sheets, etc. So no problem of mixing up meta data this way.

To produce quality prints, I save the NEF as (16 bit) TIFF, and then print from Photoshop. This TIFF is also not kept/archived, again no problem of mixing up meta data this way.

Now it becomes more tricky: in case I need to perform some complex editing that can't be done in NX2, I preprocess in NX2, save the results as a 16 bit TIFF and edit this in Photoshop. This TIFF file does get filed alongside the NEF (which I also mark with a specific colour class set aside for NEFs that have a corresponding TIFF). This TIFF and NEF, I need (ok, want) to keep synchronised with respect to the metadata. So far this is a manual process, but one which I hardly ever need to perform anyway; I usually have all metadata setup before editing and the number of TIFFs that exist this way is fairly limited (most of my editing can be done within NX2). Note: when PM's cataloguing feature is implemented, I hope it includes "stacking" images and the ability to update the metadata in all stacked images in one go (like it does now for JPG/RAW pairs).

While I do take care not to edit any RAW file metadata outside PM, my setup actually would allow for it; I have PM read xmp sidecar files first. So even when I would have edited the metadata of a NEF within, say, Camera Raw, PM will read and display the correct version of the metadata. It is also automatically synchronised between all sources whenever I update the data again in PM. (note: to help myself a bit, I wrote a little perl script to check whether or not a given TIFF is older than its corresponding NEF; these cases probably need investigating as it could mean I've edited the NEF without also editing the TIFF).

Right, so now for some practical solution for your case. First of all I would ditch the jpgs from your workflow and use the embedded preview. This would solve probably 95% of your potential problems. For the rest, if you make metadata changes in e.g. Atomic View that end up only in a sidecar file, simply setup PM to read xmp sidecars first and then "update" a dummy field in PM in order to synchronize the embedded metadata NX2 uses. You could write a little script to find those files with updated xmp but with older NEFs to help you with this step.

Hope this helps,
    Hayo

[michael33]

Hayo,

thanks for your heads up  !

Sometimes, the obvious is so hard to see! Even though I knew that CNX2 embeddes a full size JPG in the NEF (have a look at the file size of the NEF after you processed it), I completely overlooked that option. Extracting the preview files in PM, instead of saving the NEF into a JPG in CNX2, does the trick (the sidecar metadata gets imbedded).
So simple, so elegant.
With that, the way I handle my files should work.

Many thanks!

Tot ziens
Michael

PS: I eager wait for the cataloge program too, but I fear, that it will still take quite some time, as camerabits has not started the beta phase yet. Once the beta phase is over, it will be on my shopping list.