IPTC Keywords from Lightroom to PM

[mhartmann]

I am adding keywords in LR. Theat are organized in a controlled vocabulary. I found that the highlevel category keywords I dont export with LR will be shown and exported in PM.

Here is a snapshot of the keywords displayed and exported by PM:

Country, GER, Games, General, Heinrich Popow, Markus Rehm, Paralympic, People, Sochi 2014, Travel, Winter,
Country | GER, General | Games, General | Paralympic, General | Sochi 2014, General | Travel, General | Winter, People | Heinrich Popow, People | Markus

"General" and "People" should not be there !?

On top of this, IPTC Info shows some strange dropdown menu. Huuuh.

The goal is to hide the top level keywords added in Lightroom.

[Kirk Baker]

Having a sample file (the metadata) would be really useful for me for researching your issue.  Use the 'Attachments and other options' link when you're composing your reply to this message and there you'll be able to upload your sample file(s).

Thanks,

-Kirk

[mhartmann]

Hi Kirk, attached you will find a sample photo exported with PM5.

Keywords are done in Lightroom 5.3, but Photo Mechanic is displaying the a lot more than I was looking for ;-)

1.Day, Alpine Skiing, Athlete name, Classification, Competition, Country, Crash, Day, Downhill, Event, Games, Gender, General, Men, Paralympic, Sitting, Sochi 2014, Tylor WALKER, USA, Winter, Athlete name | Tylor WALKER, Classification | Sitting, Country | USA, Day | 1.Day, Event | Competition, Gender | Men, General | Crash, General | Games, General | Paralympic, General | Sochi 2014, General | Winter, Sport | Alpine Skiing, Sport | Alpine Skiing | Downhill

I just need the single Keywords without the groups. LR doesnt export them.

thanks,
Marcus

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[mhartmann]

Here is the dialog in IPTC info

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[Kirk Baker]

Marcus,

Here are the non-hierarchical keywords contained within the XMP portion of your file (there are also keywords in the IPTC portion of the file) :

     <rdf:li>1.Day</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Alpine Skiing</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Athlete name</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Classification</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Competition</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Country</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Crash</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Day</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Downhill</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Event</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Games</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Gender</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Men</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Paralympic</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Sitting</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Sochi 2014</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Tylor WALKER</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>USA</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Winter</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Athlete name|Tylor WALKER</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Classification|Sitting</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Country|USA</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Day|1.Day</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Event|Competition</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Gender|Men</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Crash</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Games</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Paralympic</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Sochi 2014</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Winter</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Sport|Alpine Skiing</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Sport|Alpine Skiing|Downhill</rdf:li>

and the hierarchical keywords:

     <rdf:li>Athlete name|Tylor WALKER</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Classification|Sitting</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Country|USA</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Day|1.Day</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Event|Competition</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Gender|Men</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Crash</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Games</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Paralympic</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Sochi 2014</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>General|Winter</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Sport|Alpine Skiing</rdf:li>
     <rdf:li>Sport|Alpine Skiing|Downhill</rdf:li>

Given that all of these keywords are in your file, what would you expect PM to list as your keywords?

-Kirk

[mhartmann]

Kirk thanks for the analysis. I would like to use a hierarchical keyword stucture to annotate photos from sport events.
This includes some generic keywords as well as specific keyword like athlete name and country
Currently Lightroom is my tool to write the data.

I wonder why the keywords appar at to portions, XMP and IPTC. Is that right, Did I do wrong?

Why are they stored as hierarchical keywords and non-hierarchical keywords.

Is there a better strategy to add keywords.

The goal is to feed Photodeck ;-)

[Kirk Baker]

Kirk thanks for the analysis. I would like to use a hierarchical keyword stucture to annotate photos from sport events.
This includes some generic keywords as well as specific keyword like athlete name and country
Currently Lightroom is my tool to write the data.

I wonder why the keywords appar at to portions, XMP and IPTC. Is that right, Did I do wrong?

Why are they stored as hierarchical keywords and non-hierarchical keywords.

Is there a better strategy to add keywords.

The goal is to feed Photodeck ;-)

I'm not a Lightroom expert, but check the metadata settings.  See if there is a way to only write hierarchical keywords and not put each keyword in the path into the non-hierarchical keywords.  There is likely also the ability to write out only XMP and not IPTC.

-Kirk

[mhartmann]

Argh, I cant find a way to stop Lightroom doing both. Its writing hierarchical and non hierarchical keywords. PM shows both.

[RichWagner]

This is a HUGE problem for those of use who use Lightroom and do our keywording in PM, and the problem is well-known.  (Photomechanic does not have a DAM, nor does it do RAW processing, etc., right?) The problem originates from LR's use of a new MWG Specification, where the hierarchical path elements of keywords MUST be flattened and each hierarchy node must be stored as a separate keyword entry in the XMP “dc:subject”.

Lightroom uses a new unofficial Lightroom Scheme that stores keywords with the hierarchy preserved (inside the “lr:HierarchicalSubject” field) and the Dublin Core Scheme to store flattened keywords (inside the “dc:subject” field).

Other keywording software has gotten around the problem by setting the priority of “lr:HierarchicalSubject” higher than “dc:subject”. This is simply because LR is a widely adopted program and they need to provide good compatibility with it.  It would be nice if CameraBits could do the same, or find an alternative solution. Right now, the interaction between LR and Photomechanic is jacked up - and many of us depend on LR, so guess which app is at risk of getting dropped...  Alternatively, it would be useful if Camera Bits could publicly document the problem so that end-users could go back to Adobe's LR development team and complain and try to get it fixed on their end.  Either way, a workflow that incorporates both LR and PM requires a fix to this problem.  Perhaps even a toggle in PM to improve compatibility with LR?

See http://blog.daminion.net/upcoming-posts/hierarchical-keywords-in-lightroom-be-careful/

and also page 63 of http://www.metadataworkinggroup.com/pdf/mwg_guidance.pdf (Version 2.0
November 2010) where it states,

"A Changer …
• MUST write the XMP dc:subject property to store the individual keywords. Hierarchical path elements MUST be flattened, which means that each hierarchy node needs to be stored as a separate keyword entry to XMP dc:subject."

Currently, Photo Mechanic does not conform to this guideline.

--Rich Wagner

[Woodie]

What scheme does Adobe Bridge use?  Since I use PM for the "upfront" work and Photo Supreme for cataloging, it's not a big issue for me.  Just wondered if Adobe's products will have problems with each other.

[Kirk Baker]

Rich,

This is a HUGE problem for those of use who use Lightroom and do our keywording in PM, and the problem is well-known.

Well known to whom?  We heard only about this issue on April 14th of this year by way of mhartmann's original post.

(Photomechanic does not have a DAM, nor does it do RAW processing, etc., right?)

No, and no, but does the fact that neither of these exist in PM somehow factor into the issue you're describing?

The problem originates from LR's use of a new MWG Specification, where the hierarchical path elements of keywords MUST be flattened and each hierarchy node must be stored as a separate keyword entry in the XMP “dc:subject”.

Lightroom uses a new unofficial Lightroom Scheme that stores keywords with the hierarchy preserved (inside the “lr:HierarchicalSubject” field) and the Dublin Core Scheme to store flattened keywords (inside the “dc:subject” field).

How does this "unofficial Lightroom Scheme" differ from the new MWG Specification?

Other keywording software has gotten around the problem by setting the priority of “lr:HierarchicalSubject” higher than “dc:subject”. This is simply because LR is a widely adopted program and they need to provide good compatibility with it.  It would be nice if CameraBits could do the same, or find an alternative solution. Right now, the interaction between LR and Photomechanic is jacked up - and many of us depend on LR, so guess which app is at risk of getting dropped...  Alternatively, it would be useful if Camera Bits could publicly document the problem so that end-users could go back to Adobe's LR development team and complain and try to get it fixed on their end.  Either way, a workflow that incorporates both LR and PM requires a fix to this problem.  Perhaps even a toggle in PM to improve compatibility with LR?

Priority?  As in these other applications show only the hierarchical subject keywords, or do they use the hierarchical keywords as a filter against the dc:subject keywords to remove displayed duplication of the flattened keywords?

PM has a single Keywords field.  It would be useful if you could show a set of hierarchical keywords along with some flat keywords and how one would expect them to look inside PM.  PM offers the option to only write hierarchical (we call them Structured) keywords in the lr:HierarchicalSubject tag and leave them out of the dc:subject tag.  It is my understanding that this option does not suffice for round trip usage with PM and LR.  Is that correct?

Sample images with keywords/hierarchical keywords and screen shots of the IPTC Info dialog (edited to show what you expect to see) would be helpful.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[RichWagner]

I'll work on getting some examples together and addressing the questions you posed.  Thanks!

--Rich

[RichWagner]

Ok, here goes...  I'll walk through an example and see what happens. 

Workflow:
Edit images in LR 5.4, no keywording, write XMP to sidecar files.
Open image folder in PM5, apply keywords via the Structured Keyword panel. (Doesn't get any better than this!)
Return to LR, Read Metadata from Files to update keywords (and any other metadata changes).
MAKE NO OTHER CHANGES IN LR, then Write Metadata to Sidecar files to see effect of LR on PM5 keywording.
Re-open image folder in PM5.  YUCK!!!
Force save in PM5 to see if any other changes occur (space char in other field)

Now, images and sidecar file uploads... not sure how to embed in this text, so will just Post.

Thanks,

--Rich


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[RichWagner]

P.S.  As you can see, keywording in LR is absolutely ugly (that's being kind!!!), which is why there is a lot of interest in a LR -> PM5 -> LR round-tripping without casualties, with the ability to go back to PM5 as needed to re-edit the metadata.  The LR team clearly broke a working paradigm for the industry by using flattened keywords in the dc:subject bag, but we're stuck with it at this point. At least they support synonyms, unlike Bridge, although it is not possible to search for synonyms when entering keywords! Unbelievable.

As for the "unofficial" LR scheme , xmlns:lr="http://ns.adobe.com/lightroom/1.0/", I'm not sure how it differs, if at all, from xmlns:mwg-kw=“http://www.metadataworkinggroup.com/schemas/keywords/”.  I am by no means competent in XML parsing.

Thanks for checking this out!

--Rich

[Kirk Baker]

Rich,

Can I see your IPTC/XMP Prefs from Photo Mechanic?

Thanks,

-Kirk