Author Topic: 'Special Instructions' field missing, when moving images over to Dropbox !  (Read 1296 times)

Offline SRCfoto69

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Hi team, hoping someone can help me, as this is doing my head in !! 
I have just completed a weeks work photographing school kindy groups that the local paper publishes at start of each year. In the IPTC meta caption field I have put the 'date-filename-the school name and the individual class name'. In the 'Special Instructions' field I have put the teachers name and their contact phone number. (I don't want to put this in the actual Caption box, as the sub editors are notorious for just copy/paste all the info & obviously don't want the teachers name/phone number published, hence using the 'special instructions'.
My issue now is that when I for example drag an image over into a Dropbox folder and I then check the 'File Info' section, I do not see the 'Special Instructions' field, with the teachers info.
Is there a way of 'amending' this so that I do see this info, but I don't want to lose the info in the caption box I have already taken a day to fill out.
Hope this all makes some kind of sense.
Cheers
Scott


Offline ahoward

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Re: 'Special Instructions' field missing, when moving images over to Dropbox !
« Reply #1 on: February 14, 2024, 02:06:08 PM »
My issue now is that when I for example drag an image over into a Dropbox folder and I then check the 'File Info' section, I do not see the 'Special Instructions' field, with the teachers info.
'File Info' is not an option in Photo Mechanic, but it is an option in Photoshop's 'File' menu; the analog in Photo Mechanic would the Metadata Info window, accessible from the Image menu. So just to make sure we are on the same page here, are we talking about Photo Mechanic's Metadata Info window, or Photoshop's File Info window, or something else?

Offline SRCfoto69

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Re: 'Special Instructions' field missing, when moving images over to Dropbox !
« Reply #2 on: February 14, 2024, 02:17:48 PM »
Hi mate, no sorry, I mean when you then open the file info tab in DROPBOX to show the attached data. I see all other fields except the 'Special Instructions' tab where I have put info into in PM. In the attached image, you will see the image and data on the right, but the 'Special Instructions' is not there. I have also attached an image of the PM IPTC tab with scrubbed info in the 'Special Instructions'

Offline ahoward

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Re: 'Special Instructions' field missing, when moving images over to Dropbox !
« Reply #3 on: February 14, 2024, 02:34:45 PM »
Dropbox may simply not show that data, and, as a multi-purpose file hosting site, rather than an image-specific service, I wouldn't really expect it to be able to parse/display all metadata. I'd imagine that if you were to download the file again and view it in Photo Mechanic, the data in the Special Instructions field would still be there.

Without Dropbox making a change to what metadata their products display, your best solution is to upload an image with all metadata fields populated, and use one of those for the data that you'd like it to display.

I've attached a sample file that has almost all fields filled out for you to use as a test.

Offline SRCfoto69

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Re: 'Special Instructions' field missing, when moving images over to Dropbox !
« Reply #4 on: February 14, 2024, 02:46:20 PM »
Thanks a million for that. Same thing, I see you put an entry in the 'special instructions' field, but when I moved that image over to dropbox, it is not in the list. So must be something as you say as far as Dropbox not recognising all meta fields. Thanks very much for your time.