NX2 & PM

[Dave J]

Kirk sorrry if this is an NX2 problem shouldnt waste your time if so but would like to use PM as intended whatever the problem.
Ref: the last post by plambrou - I have the following checked all the time in NX2 preferences XMP/IPTC presets
and for the same reasons as plambrou.
copyright notice
country
telephone
email
Plus one Keyword preset with about six words in it.

Further If I simply right click an image in Windows gallery TIFF/jpeg (the one I sent you for example) with no NX2 involved all the data is present in 'properties - Details. including titles, tags, copyright etc.
ie all the things missing from some TIFFs in PM but strangely not all of them. Would it help if I sent one which appears OK in both programs?
Thanks

[Dave J]

Plambrou, I have only basic info in NX2 preferences similar to you, I wonder if I should remove it ie set NX2 to default? and carry on adding all info using PM. Would this affect my already proccessed images?

[Kirk Baker]

Dave,

Kirk sorrry if this is an NX2 problem shouldnt waste your time if so but would like to use PM as intended whatever the problem.
Ref: the last post by plambrou - I have the following checked all the time in NX2 preferences XMP/IPTC presets
and for the same reasons as plambrou.
copyright notice
country
telephone
email
Plus one Keyword preset with about six words in it.

Further If I simply right click an image in Windows gallery TIFF/jpeg (the one I sent you for example) with no NX2 involved all the data is present in 'properties - Details. including titles, tags, copyright etc.
ie all the things missing from some TIFFs in PM but strangely not all of them. Would it help if I sent one which appears OK in both programs?

I don't think we need any other sample files.  We will have to modify PM to ignore XMP data intended for thumbnails.

-Kirk

[Dave J]

Kirk, hoping I may have stumbled on something, if you or PM users with NX2 and PM could say a few words please.
I right clicked (in Windows gallery) the TIFF thumbnails which are a problem against the ones which are not a problem and do show data OK in PM.
Noticed that the problem files all showed that LZW compression was set in my NX2 'Save options dialogue' menu.
The OK images were shown as 'None. ie no compression which is what I expect.
 I do not know why LZW became selected for some images.
In camera (D700) I have 14 bit lossless set and normally have None set in NX2.
I can only assume that when doing a reinstall or experimenting somehow LZW became set. Might be NX2 default, dont know.
Anyhow dooes anyone think this could be relevant to my problem, does LZW remove some information?

Thanks

[Kirk Baker]

Kirk, hoping I may have stumbled on something, if you or PM users with NX2 and PM could say a few words please.
I right clicked (in Windows gallery) the TIFF thumbnails which are a problem against the ones which are not a problem and do show data OK in PM.
Noticed that the problem files all showed that LZW compression was set in my NX2 'Save options dialogue' menu.
The OK images were shown as 'None. ie no compression which is what I expect.
 I do not know why LZW became selected for some images.
In camera (D700) I have 14 bit lossless set and normally have None set in NX2.
I can only assume that when doing a reinstall or experimenting somehow LZW became set. Might be NX2 default, dont know.
Anyhow dooes anyone think this could be relevant to my problem, does LZW remove some information?

That should only affect the image (pixel data) size and not the metadata which is never compressed.  Now, it may be that when LZW compression is set in NX2 it causes it to write out a blank XMP record for thumbnails and when LZW is not enabled, NX2 doesn't write out an empty XMP record for the thumbnails.

-Kirk

[Dave J]

Hi Kirk whatever the theory, which is beyond me, that was the answer.
I copied an original NEF (Data was always present in NEFs PM & NX2) and saved it as TIFF making sure that LZW was not set in NX2 (ie options set to none) and all is well.
My problem TIFFs now have their data viewable in PM.
(Sorts me out as I want 'None' set anyway but I guess there must be others using LZW so maybe there is still an anomaly?)
Thanks

[plambrou]

I do not compress TIFFs so this issue never showed up.

[Dave J]

Thanks for reply, I guess is possible that I was the only PM user to have some LZW saved TIFFS (Unintentionally) The NX2 handbook makes only a fleeting reference to LZW saying that "This option employs a lossless compression scheme based on the LZW algorithm"

[Hayo Baan]

Weird, I always use LZW compression on my TIFFs and I have never had any problems with them. Be they saved from NX2 or Photoshop…
I do, however, use only PM to edit the meta data.

Curious, I just tested altering IPTC/XMP data of a (tiff) file within Capture NX2 to see what happens when you do so. What I found was that if I altered (e.g., added a keyword) the meta data, NX2 stripped-out the label and rating fields from the meta data. The ratings would still show as they are still present in another form somewhere in the meta data, the colour class strangely enough would not show any more, though NX2 previously understood it perfectly fine. This clearly is a bug in NX2.

So once again I am happy to never edit IPTC/XMP meta data within NX2 as it is clearly buggy…

Hope this sheds some light at your problem too.

[Dave J]

Thanks - I have received a very good explanation from a Nikonians member, hope he does not mind me passing on the info briefly so not completely word for word -

 "He expects that all content of the TIFF (LZW) including exif is compressed and the preview thumbnail jpg is not compressed. Preview jpg is already compressed. Pm & other readers do not uncompress the compressed data so can access only the preview thumbnail which has no exif data. It is possible some programs can extract the thumbnail add the data and reinsert back into the image."

[Kirk Baker]

Thanks - I have received a very good explanation from a Nikonians member, hope he does not mind me passing on the info briefly so not completely word for word -

 "He expects that all content of the TIFF (LZW) including exif is compressed and the preview thumbnail jpg is not compressed. Preview jpg is already compressed. Pm & other readers do not uncompress the compressed data so can access only the preview thumbnail which has no exif data. It is possible some programs can extract the thumbnail add the data and reinsert back into the image."

That's an interesting explanation for a different problem.  It does not explain why Capture NX2 writes out a blank XMP record in the thumbnail's IFD table.  This is a bug in Capture NX2 and we'll likely add some workaround to ignore the extraneous XMP record in a future update to Photo Mechanic.

-Kirk

[Dave J]

Thanks Kirk, a bit above me but get the idea, I am happy now as I know what my problem was and how to avoid it, by making sure I do not set LZW which I dont want anyway.

[dennis]

I don't think we need any other sample files.  We will have to modify PM to ignore XMP data intended for thumbnails.
-Kirk

Kirk is correct, and I have updated PM to fix this issue.

I now make sure we ignore any XMP block that is part of a thumbnail.  In this sample case there was a separate TIFF IFD (for the thumbnail) that contained a blank XMP record, and PM was latching on to that when it should have just ignored it.  Now it is being ignored and PM correctly focuses on the primary XMP record.

Thanks all for your help.  I wish all issues were this easy to fix 

--dennis

[pshrutpark]

Thanks - I have received a very good explanation from a Nikonians member, hope he does not mind me passing on the info briefly so not completely word for word -

 "He expects that all content of the TIFF (LZW) including exif is compressed and the preview thumbnail jpg is not compressed. Preview jpg is already compressed. Pm & other readers do not uncompress the compressed data so can access only the preview thumbnail which has no exif data. It is possible some programs can extract the thumbnail add the data and reinsert back into the image."

That's an interesting explanation for a different problem.  It does not explain why Capture NX2 writes out a blank XMP record in the thumbnail's IFD table.  This is a bug in Capture NX2 and we'll likely add some workaround to ignore the extraneous XMP record in a future update to Photo Mechanic.

-Kirk

Hello Kirk.

Am interested to know if the workaround has been implemented in PM v5.0?

Thanks

Peter

[Kirk Baker]

Peter,

Thanks - I have received a very good explanation from a Nikonians member, hope he does not mind me passing on the info briefly so not completely word for word -

 "He expects that all content of the TIFF (LZW) including exif is compressed and the preview thumbnail jpg is not compressed. Preview jpg is already compressed. Pm & other readers do not uncompress the compressed data so can access only the preview thumbnail which has no exif data. It is possible some programs can extract the thumbnail add the data and reinsert back into the image."

That's an interesting explanation for a different problem.  It does not explain why Capture NX2 writes out a blank XMP record in the thumbnail's IFD table.  This is a bug in Capture NX2 and we'll likely add some workaround to ignore the extraneous XMP record in a future update to Photo Mechanic.

Am interested to know if the workaround has been implemented in PM v5.0?

I think so.  I'll have to check with Dennis.  It is likely also fixed in the upcoming 4.6.9 update.

-Kirk