Disappearing IPTC Contact Info

[ABG]

Matt K and Philo kindly invited me over to their place last night to review some photos I had taken at a wedding on Saturday.

All of the photos were transferred from CF card to laptop using Image Ingester. If you haven't looked at it, do so now. It's a great program. After burning some CD's and transferring the images onto Matt's computer, I noticed that the IPTC contact info and in fact all of the info you normally see under File Info in Bridge or PS was missing. I checked on my laptop and all of the images had the info embedded.

What could possibly be causing this? Has anybody else experienced this? I'm concerned that if I burn CD's or DVD's for my client that this info will be missing. I really want the world to know these images are subject to copyright as well as letting interested parties know my contact details.

[stubbsy]

Andrew

Are you saying the info was there on the originals, but when those same originals were burned to disc (with no other processing) that the info wasn't there? Have you checked with some program other than PS Bridge eg Opanda EXIF viewer

[Glen]

Andrew, which camera? I remember some question with a D70s but not a D70 if you haven't upgraded to the latest plug in for PS

[Matt. K]

Andrew
It may be that when you transferred the images to disk, in Photoshop there is an 'export cache' option. The cache normally holds the information that tells the computer which images you have tagged, rotated, and the order in which you have arranged them in Bridge. I would not think that the cache holds the IPTC info....but danged if I can think of why that info was stripped from the images. I would be disturbed if the IPTC info was held in the cache because that's a very poor place to keep it. This needs further investigation. Perhaps CS2 only allows the IPTC to be visible in CS2?? Once again, not a credible option.
I am presuming the info was added through CS2 IPTC window? It should damn-well be there! Any clues anyone?  PS Andrew did a damn good job on the wedding if anyone is wondering. PS again...the EXIF data is also stripped from the images

[ABG]

Andrew

Are you saying the info was there on the originals, but when those same originals were burned to disc (with no other processing) that the info wasn't there? Have you checked with some program other than PS Bridge eg Opanda EXIF viewer

Yep. Info was there on the original NEF's. Copied them onto disk and whacked them on Matt's computer - nothing showing in File Info. I can still see all of the IPTC details on my laptop.

Matt, can you please check using Opanda or similar and let me know if you see anything there?

[Glen]

Andrew, is that File Info in PS? Does it show up in Nikon Capture? This sounds a little like the encrypted WB issue, which was solved by an update by Adobe.

[ABG]

Andrew
It may be that when you transferred the images to disk, in Photoshop there is an 'export cache' option. The cache normally holds the information that tells the computer which images you have tagged, rotated, and the order in which you have arranged them in Bridge. I would not think that the cache holds the IPTC info....but danged if I can think of why that info was stripped from the images. I would be disturbed if the IPTC info was held in the cache because that's a very poor place to keep it. This needs further investigation. Perhaps CS2 only allows the IPTC to be visible in CS2?? Once again, not a credible option.
I am presuming the info was added through CS2 IPTC window? It should damn-well be there! Any clues anyone?  PS Andrew did a damn good job on the wedding if anyone is wondering. PS again...the EXIF data is also stripped from the images

Matt,

I just picked up the whole folder and dumped it into my CD burning folder. Wouldn't the cache reside with the images in the same folder? (I've got no idea when it comes to the dark art of computing).

The IPTC info was added using Image Ingester. I really have no idea how it works, but I can sure see it on my laptop okay. I might try emailing an image to someone who has CS2 and see if they can still see it. As you suggest Matt, it may be a backwards compatibility issue, but that would strike me as a glaringly stupid thing for the guys at Adobe to do - I just can't believe people smart enough to write Photoshop would overlook something as obvious as this.

[stubbsy]

Andrew

Do you know what IPTC fields ImageIngester copied the info into?

[Matt. K]

Andrew
I am beginning to think that the problem resides with ImageIngester. I can think of no other reason for the problem and ImageIngester is the new boy on the block. Weird.

[ABG]

Andrew

Do you know what IPTC fields ImageIngester copied the info into?

In the description area it has filled out the following fields: Author, Copyright Status, Copyright Notice, Copyright Info URL. In the IPTC contact area it has filled out Creator, Address, City, State, Postal Code, Country, Phone(s), Email(s), Website(s). All of this is done through a metadata template that resides in Photoshop.

[ABG]

Andrew
I am beginning to think that the problem resides with ImageIngester. I can think of no other reason for the problem and ImageIngester is the new boy on the block. Weird.

Image Ingester doesn't fill the information into Photoshop. It simply directs Photoshop to apply a metadata template to the selected images. If it wasn't working properly, I wouldn't be seeing it on my local drive. I doubt Image Ingester is the problem, but I'll happily admit that this isn't my area of expertise.

I also emailed one of my NEF files to Craig earlier this morning. When he opens it in CS2, he can't see anything in the File Info area either.

[ABG]

Okay, just looking at the files in My Computer, I see there's a .XMP file that resides beside the NEF or JPG file. Does the IPTC info reside in this file? If so, how do I ensure the security of the IPTC info once I've emailed an image to a client?

[gstark]

Should be inside the image, I believe.

[stubbsy]

Andrew

With the extra info above this now makes sense. ImageIngester tells PSCS to put the info into the PSCS IPTC metadata (via the template). What that makes PSCS do is add it into the XMP sidecar file it uses (NOT into the PITC fields in the NEF). So if you move the NEF, but not the XMP sidecar file you lose the IPTC info since it's in the XMP file.

[ABG]

Thanks Peter. Can you suggest how I can get the XMP sidecar file to permanently attach itself to the image (if that's possible)? Or is there something else that I should be doing? At the end of the day, I simply want my copyright and contact info to appear in the File Info area when I send my client the images.

[gstark]

Andrew,

I have put that into the comments field in the camera, so that it's always there in the EXIF. You can do this through NCC, and we can set up your camera for this on Saturday if you like.

Would that be satisfactory, at least for the future?

[ABG]

Gary, I had no idea you could do this and obviously, that will be a great solution for future shoots. Is there anything I can do to salvage the wedding I just took?

If I open Adobe Bridge and go to Tools > Append Metadata, will that attach the IPTC info to the file, or will that just create a sidecar file?

[gstark]

Andrew,

I'm sure that there are some batch processes around that will let you embed something like this into the EXIF.

I'm not sure if irfanview dows this, but I guess a google on exif editors would probably yield the response that you need.

[gstark]

Andrew,

Yep, Google found a few things.

Try http://www.opanda.com/en/pe/ as a starting point

[ABG]

Thank you so much Gary. I'll have a look as soon as I get the time.

[stubbsy]

Andrew

Are you trying to get the IPTC data into the original NEFS (answer = no can do) or into the files after PP (JPG, TIF?). If the latter many programs can do this for you. iMatch for example fully supports XMP sidecar files and let's you embed the sidecar info into the corresponding TIF or JPG file. It will even create the TIF or JPG from your PSD file (even adding borders and watermarks if you want).

Or you could save as DNG which embeds the IPTC in the DNG (lot's about that HERE)

[ABG]

Woohoo!!! Finally found a workflow that saves the IPTC info with the JPG's I'm creating. Stubbsy, you were spot on. Converting to DNG made all the difference.

Thanks so much to everyone who helped me sort this out. If there's enough interest, I'll put up a separate post detailing my workflow, so others don't have to go through the headaches that I have. I'll also put up a post with a few of the images from the wedding in the C&C section as soon as I'm finished PP'ing everything.

[Matt. K]

Andrew
Looking forward to seeing that workflow.