Are the KEYWORDS in Bridge portable?

[Samm]

I have just learned how to create and search keywords in Adobe Bridge. While it seems to be a good investment of my time for the long-term, however, it is quite a tedious job and extremely time consuming at this moment Now, my question is: If one day I use another digital management program other than Bridge, would the Metadata (and keyword) be carried over to the new program? Thanks.

Sam

[Samm]

Anybody can help me on this one at all???? Aren't you concern that the hard effort you put in for creating the keywords will one day be lost if you move to another program from Bridge? Please tell me if you know the answers. Thanks again.

Sam

[DavidW]

There is other software that can read the keywords applied in Bridge. For full support, save Camera Raw data in sidecar files and look for applications with XMP support, such as recent versions of iView MediaPro.



David

[Samm]

Thanks David. After the keywords are added to the different images. I now have 3 files of the same image in different formats. One is raw, one is jpeg, and the other is XMP. Are the XMP permanently attached to the raw files from now on unless I delete them? Windows also asked me for the preferred program to open those XMP files. Is there a program to open XMP at all? Are XMP files just text files? Lots of questions, but only if you know the answers...... Thanks again.

Sam

[primoz]

I have no idea about Adobe Bridge, but I would suspect it adds keywords into IPTC fields. If so, then there's bunch of programs which use this. IPTC is standard for captioning (including keywords), so there's lot of programs for editing IPTC and to use IPTC for sorting, searching and archiving photos based on IPTC.

[DavidW]

The XMP files are sidecar files which contain metadata for the RAW files. The RAW files are left untouched by the Adobe software. The XMP files are in XML, which is plain text - open them in a text editor to see what they contain.

As primoz says, the Adobe software uses IPTC fields where appropriate - most of what it does is standardised across vendors.



David

[staciecd]

How did you add the keywords? Is there a tutorial you used? Hopefully you can add words to multiple pictures :-)

[DavidW]

If you go into help from Bridge (F1 in Windows) and search for Keywords, the first topic returned (at least on my system, with Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium) is "To apply keywords to files with Bridge", which explains it all.



David

[staciecd]

If you go into help from Bridge (F1 in Windows) and search for Keywords, the first topic returned (at least on my system, with Adobe Creative Suite 2 Premium) is "To apply keywords to files with Bridge", which explains it all.

David

Sweet - thank you! I really need to sit down and concentrate or learning the program.

Stacie

[J Rabin]

...Keywords in Adobe Bridge...If one day I use another digital management program other than Bridge, would the Metadata... be carried over to the new program?
Answers depend whether files are .CRW/.CR2 versus JPG/TIF.
IPTC metadata is an important feature for me at work.

For JPG or TIF, it's all cake. Metadata is written into the file headers of image files. Using PSCS2/Adobe Bridge is fine.
Have you ever taken a TIF or JPG and opened it in text editor? Interesting experience what data about the image and photographer you can find there for prying eyes who want to know...Scary. Most people don't know you can open images into text editors, and manually edit metadata. PSCS2 Save for Web, and the equal command in other programs STRIPS all this stuff to save space in the compressed jpg that you web post or email.

If you are shooting Canon RAW, be aware that Canon DOES NOT permit writing keyword, or any metadata into the RAW file (Nikon NEF does). And there are diffferences between .CRW and .CR2 files and embedding.

You did not say what file formats you are working in.

PSCS2/Bridge has a bad metadata bug, oh excuse me, a feature, in order to have XMP maintain backward compatibility with older Legacy IPTC metadata - that screws things up. I NEVER use PSCS2 for embedding. Certainly not in any RAW workflow.
On Windows platform, Canon RAW metadata goes into an .XMP sidecar file. On Mac platform the metadata can go to a side car, or into mac file resource fork. If it ends up in the resource fork, it will be lost if you move file.
Breezebrowser software DOES enable writing directly to the RAW file, and does this directly on camera download. I think they licensed the developer kit from Canon. The slickest IPTC metadata editors are iView Media Pro 3 (Best consumer IPTC), and Photo Mechanic. iView Media Pro's implementation of "controlled" keyword vocabulary is stellar for a consumer product. As noted above, if using RAW workflow, it is pointless to do embedding with Bridge, iView, PhotoMechanic. You think you are embedding, but you are really not, and stuff is lost when you start converting and moving files.

The batch and XMP power in all these programs is that you can make different XMP metadata keyword templates, save them, and then apply them in batch to groups of files any time.

If you are a Canon RAW shooting photographer, use PSCS2, use IPTC metadata, and want ZERO hassles with metadata embedding support, just adopt Adobe DNG as your RAW format early in workflow. Adobe DNG is open, and does permit IPTC metadata embedded (written) in the file header.

I have not experimented yet to see where Canon software is putting IPTC metadata in RAW files.

The best embedding is done earliest in workflow, at download time, or shortly after, before conversions or multiple copies of a file are made.
Shoot RAW, download, make selects, convert to DNG, cull more selects, embed IPTC copyright, captions, keywords, photog name, date, location, etc, etc.
THEN go to work and start editing the files.

Jack

[Samm]

Thanks a lot David and Primoz. I at least believe now that my effort will not be wasted in the longrun. Stacie, hope you have learned something new too. THANKS AGAIN.......

Sam

[DavidW]

Jack - can you give more details about the CS2 problem. I know there was a problem with Photoshop 7 and CS when it came to IPTC - Adobe released some fixed components which are on the newscodes.com site.

The same site says that that flaw is fixed in CS2 - have Adobe introduced another problem in fixing that flaw?



David

[J Rabin]

Jack - can you give more details about the CS2 problem. I know there was a problem with Photoshop 7 and CS when it came to IPTC - Adobe released some fixed components which are on the newscodes.com site. The same site says that that flaw is fixed in CS2 - have Adobe introduced another problem in fixing that flaw?

David, I could not locate those Adobe updates on the IPTC org website. Can you help me "drill" for them?
My problem was Adobe CS2 implementation of IPTC Core with their XMP subset of XML was fine, but incomplete. This was fine, and open. But, they did weird stuff maintaining backward compatibility with IPTC Legacy metadata. Hence some metadata from Canon 10D/300D rebel .CRW files, when the .thm's were missing, had losses, Some of the IPTC Core fields are read but not written in CS2, and some other problems.

Adobe ignored IPTC Core, Event and People fields, which I use.
Going to DNG workflow solves most IPTC metadata problems. And going to iView Media Pro gave a more complete flexible IPTC Core set, with better controlled keyword vocabularies, and a plug-in panel to see IPTC People and Event fields in PhotoShop.

But ACR cannot be used as the sole RAW converter because it makes White Balance interpretation errors with Canon DO lens images (too blue and cold), and with some flash images, and does not have Picture Styles. So, I've gone to DNG, with embedding original RAW.

I do not use Adobe PSCS2 or Bridge for entering metadata or keywords. I do this in iView Media Pro, using Adobe XMP templates. Photo Mechanic is equally good. The files are verified for embedded keywords, Photog copyright, whether photo release signed (we used Instructions field for that), etc., etc. and then images are forwarded to a Extensis Portfolio NetPublish web database. I don't recommend "editing photographers" use Extensis Portfolio, even though its database is faster, more complete, because it is not a color managed application. Kiss of death to an individual photog.

Are you saying that Adobe's CS2 automatic "updates" have fixed this?
Are the updates at newscodes, or at iptc.org/iptc4xmp?
All this frickin software integration gives me a headache.
I think I accidentally highjacked the original poster's thread. Sorry!

Jack

[jj1987]

The new directory that Adobe Bridge will store the user data is:
C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\Adobe\Bridge\
(Replace USERNAME with your username on your PC (Mac directory is different). Note: This is a hidden directory)

In there you'll find an XML file called: "Adobe Bridge Keywords.xml"

[DavidW]

Hi Jack,

See http://www.iptc.org/IPTC4XMP/ - especially this (http://www.iptc.org/std/Iptc4xmpCore/1.0/documentation/Ipct4xmpCore_1.0-doc-ANcs1panelShareFix_1.pdf) and the notes at the bottom of the page (which read "This problem does not apply to Photoshop CS2").


I'll need to look further into the incompleteness you mention - I had thought not all fields were present.



David