Support of XMP-files ?

[Dieter Mayr]

Are there any thoughts of reading XMP sidecar files in the future ?
Now any metadata that is stored in a XMP sidecar file (lets say by a external catalog software) is not read by PWP, neither is the orietation flag if the orientation is changed by a other software which writes a XMP instead of directly into the RAW file.
I have, by accident, switched off the orientation sensor of my camera and so I had a bunch of images with the wrong orientation.
My catalog program lets me rotate them, but saves it just in the XMP, so it is not seen by PWP.
I have changed the RAW file itself with ExifTool then to correct it.
Keywords that should be in a processed image have to be transfered manually too, if the XMP is supported they could be transfered automatically.

[JvdW]

XMP sidecar file support would be appriciated here too.
Support of XMP EXIF fields for TIFF and JPG files is even higher on my wishlist.

John

[Winfried]

Although I know that metadata is a mess, I would also appriciate some kind of xmp-support.
As I understand it there a at least two different flavours of xmp-metadata: Adobe's standard and the standard from the http://www.metadataworkinggroup.org/.
One point for instance: When to write .xmp-files and when to embed the data into the files.
Normally I have no problem with embedding the xmp-data into *.jpg, *.tif, but to my opinion raw-files should never ever changed.
Problem: DNG-Files are designed to have xmp-data inside that can be changed. But I do not want my native rawfiles from Pentax (dng-files) be changed.
But writing .xmp-flies for dng is not conform to the standard. It is not easy to decide which way to go.
So to my opinion reading and writing .xmp-files is only important for raw-converters. For jpg- and tif-files the .xmp-fields should be embedded.
But it is nearly impossible to support all kind of xmp-fields. Adobe dumps nearly every keystroke into the xmp-data, which is useless (to my opinion).
Adobe writes some cropping information into the xmp-files. PhotoNinja does the same, but uses their own xmp-fields for this information. What to do
if you crop a jpg-file containing this information. Should it be updated? And if yes, which field should be used?
So xmp is a waste standard and it is not easy to support all functionallities.

But having said this all, I would like to see some more supported fields: i.e. ratings ( one to 5 stars) and labels (colors).
But labels are quite tricky: they are just text. So if you set a color green and use a german speaking program, the german speaking program would expect grün (with Umlaut).
It does normally not understand green. Furthermore the meaning of the colors might be different, even in the Adobe universe (bridge and Lightroom) :-)

[JvdW]

I agree that metadata are a mess, but there seems to be at least some kind of a low level standard format, because there are tools available to make all the data visible.
The main problem with PWP is that all XMP data gets stripped if a file is edited. It would be nice if the existing metadata could just be copied to the modified file. In my opinion there is no need to edit or even view the XMP data within PWP. Would it be possible to copy the XMP metadata without knowing which standard was used?

If it is possible it might work like this:
Sidecar files and embedded metadata both have to be supported, the choice which to use would depend on the input file and should not be changed. If the input file is a raw file (with a sidecar file) the resulting *.jpg or *.tif will have the data embedded.

Support for XMP data would really help to improve the integration of PWP in a workflow with other applications.

John

[Dieter Mayr]

Good points made, Winfried.
I don't have a problem neither with writing the metadata directly to *.jpg or *.tif files as they are designed to contain metadata.
And, like you, I don't like the idea to change my raw files (*.nef, in my case) directly.
I use Zoner Photo Studio as managing software, using it to keyword, for captioning and rating, and use mostly PWP for RAW conversion.
ZPS writes the metadata directly to tiffs and jpegs, but in a xmp-sidecar-file for raws (I do not use dng, so I can't say now how it does with dng)
If i ever use something differnt to convert my RAWs I create a 16 bit tif with that application and work with that in PWP.
So for me the most important data to transfer from a xmp-sidecar to a final tiff or jpeg would be: Keywords, Caption, Rating, Color labels and the IPTC fields.
As PWP does not use them directly, they could be just given through one to one.
I have to confess, I didn't research a lot now about how this would be possible in respect to standards and possible incompatibilities, should be just a collection of thoughts for now.

[Winfried]

Here is an example how PWP deletes metadata. The metadata are from the exiftool.
The two files are zipped because of upload restriction.
To my opinion most of the data describing the settings of the rawconverter are quite useless,
but this example shows how complex this topic is. Other programs/rawconverters create other fields and even more data.

[Dieter Mayr]

I agree, Winfried, the "working data" of a external RAW converter I would not care much about, they are important to the RAW converter but as the image is processed and saved in a TIFF they are useless to ther programs. And I think no RAW converter can deal with any settings of a other RAW converter (maybe with the exeption of close brothers like Lightroom and Adobe Camera Raw).
But I would like to see the the organizing part of the metadata in my PWP-saved files, like as said above, Keywords, Location data, Rating, ColorLabels, IPTC data (well, not so important for a amateur like me, but very important for one who publishes the photo somehow), etc.
About the different writings of color labels, why not transfer them 1:1, most use just one organizing software, which should be able to deal with color label settings it has written once to the image itself.
And if one transfers it to a other application that does not not understand grün instead of green, well, it needs some conversion anyway, if the image was saved from PWP or is a unprocessed image just managed by the database.

[ksinkel]

Just to clarify, PWP does allow you to set and display the IPTC fields name, keywords, caption, location, city, state/province, and country, and all IPTC fields are preserved in file formats which support them. The latter is also true for EXIF data.

Kiril

[Dieter Mayr]

Thanks for the clarification , Kiril.
My main intention to open this thread was to suggest the transfer of metadata in files that do not support to have them written inside, like most proprietary raw files and thus have a XMP-sidecar file acompanied.
I like that fact that PWP stores its RAW developing settings in it's own file, so there should not be any disturbing between PWP and a other RA-converter, but to get that metadata in from a XMP-file that was written by a DAM-software would be a nice thing and save some work (and possible mistakes) when transfering the metadata after processing by the DAM software from the RAW to the TIFF / JPG.