Browsing Keywords and Saving as Unicode

[ulim]

Hello, I have two questions:

1. Is it possible to somehow import the IPTC keywords I have in my fotos to some browsable tree/list? I'd like to click on a keyword and then have the contact sheet display all images with that keyword. I noticed there is a keywords panel, but haven't found out how to interface between that and the IPTC fields in my images.

2. The option to "write IPTC as Unicode" is not activated by default. Does this mean it is not recommended? I actually have tons of problems moving my files between Windows and Mac, because all the special/accented characters break. Unicode would be a relief for me, so I'd like to know if there are any drawbacks to using that option? Is it maybe proprietary or perhaps most other programs cannot read Unicode?

Many thanks in advance,

Ulrich

[Kirk Baker]

Ulrich,

1. Is it possible to somehow import the IPTC keywords I have in my fotos to some browsable tree/list? I'd like to click on a keyword and then have the contact sheet display all images with that keyword. I noticed there is a keywords panel, but haven't found out how to interface between that and the IPTC fields in my images.

Generally that sort of feature is provided by a cataloging program.  Photo Mechanic does not currently have cataloging features.  We are working on adding such features right now.

2. The option to "write IPTC as Unicode" is not activated by default. Does this mean it is not recommended? I actually have tons of problems moving my files between Windows and Mac, because all the special/accented characters break. Unicode would be a relief for me, so I'd like to know if there are any drawbacks to using that option? Is it maybe proprietary or perhaps most other programs cannot read Unicode?

We don't set it by default because some applications like Photoshop cannot correctly interpret IPTC metadata encoded as UTF-8.  If you use XMP (which is encoded in unicode) then you shouldn't have any such issues, but then some applications do not work well or at all with XMP metadata.  Hopefully this will soon change and XMP will be widely adopted since it solves the text encoding issues.

-Kirk