Has anyone had any luck getting tags in HEIC metadata to show up in lightroom as keywords upon import? i have all my tags written to both the keywords and subject tags using exiftool, and if i import jpgs, it works fine (i know writing both subject and keywords is redundant. i do both because i believe apple photos recognizes iptc subject and lightroom recognizes exif keywords, and i use both at different points in my workflow). But no luck with HEIC's - ive successfully written keywords to heics since exiftool started supporting that a few months back, but no matter what keywords/subject tag data i have in the metadata, the photos are listed without any keywords when viewed from lightroom.
I've also tried to add tags to heics from within lightroom, which creates an xmp sidecar, and then using tagsfromfile to transfer to the heic itself using exiftool. I can transfer the tags but if i try to reimport the file into lightroom, it doesn't show up as a LR keyword [but note that it DOES show up as a lightroom keyword if i just leave it in the sidecar and import that way - so i wonder if it's an issue of exiftool not being able to write certain required makernotes type metadata from the sidecar to the file].
i generally just use -keywords=... and -subject=.... when experimenting. i have tinkered with things like -exif:keywords or -all:keywords, but not enough to confidently say that the solution, if there is one, doesn't relate to that. i just don't fully understand the technical stuff relating to these options within exiftool to say i've exhausted that possibility.
if anyone has any specific commands/parameters to try, i'm all ears. thanks!
I don't have access to any HEIC files myself, but my guess is that they are just too new and Adobe just hasn't gotten around to adding support. There is also probably questions as to what standard to use, as IIRC, it's Quicktime based, and as Phil has mentioned here before, Quicktime metatdata standards are a mess.
Just a couple of notes, though. Keywords is an IPTC (legacy) tag, not EXIF. There is no correlating tag in the EXIF block (except XPKeywords, sorta, which is only really supported by Microsoft). Subject is an XMP tag. Since Adobe created XMP, it's probably the one that Lightroom is more likely to get quicker support when they get around to it.
I figured as much. Adobe made a big fuss about adding heic compatibility recently - of course they were just referring to the images themselves, but sorta seems like they would've messed with keywords at the same time. Still, i hear what you're saying and that must be right. thanks for the thoughts.
Adding proper HEIC write support is next on my list of things to do. Right now ExifTool writes XMP in the same location as MP4 files, but software expects it in a different location for HEIC. This will be a lot of work, but I hope to have this done within a month or so.
- Phil
ahhh makes sense. thanks so much phil!
Actually, the way ACR (and I think Lightroom) support HEIC images is just via an XMP sidecar file. I suggest you write your changes to that instead of embedding in the file.
Interesting. Thanks for mentioning this Hayo. I'm sure you've saved some future head-banging.
BTW, it will be much less than a month before ExifTool will have this ability -- I made very good progress with this today.
- Phil
i see the update from this am, which seems to add the functionality you refer to Phil, but i am not sure it added what i was hoping it would (and if not: so be it and thank you so so much anyway for exiftool). i think this is a close derivative of Hayo's point: but i'm still not having luck transferring keywords [xmp-dc:subject and xmp-dc:hierarchicalsubject] from the adobe created xmp to the file such that lightroom picks it up when importing the HEIC WITHOUT the xmp sidecar.
It may be that whatever xmp info there is in the sidecar is proprietary and thus i can't simply write it to the heic file, and so even if the tags themselves transferred to somewhere in the HEIC metadata, other key info was not written from the XMP. I've used tagsfromfile (all<all; xmp:all<all; xmp-dc:subject<${xmp-dc:subject}; *subject*<${xmp-dc:subject}; and a few other variations) to try to write the whole xmp sidecar and was having trouble getting them to even write to, despite exiftool saying 1 file updated. i've also specifically and directly tried to populate those exact tags in the HEIC ["-xmp-dc:subject=Testing123"] - when I did it directly like this, they've written fine, but when I import into lightroom - it still doesn't show any lightroom keywords in the lightroom UI. When I leave the sidecar in the folder upon import, though, it does pick up those tags as lightroom keywords, as one would expect.
I hear you, Hayo, that it may be easiest to just use side cars, but for various reasons i hope to avoid that. can you or anyone who knows better what they're talking about than i conform that, even with today's exiftool update (and even if though it's probably easier to just use side cars), it is simply not presently possible to write directly to heic metadata in a way that it'll show up as a keyword in lightroom upon import?
i'm happy to post a sample xmp sidecar as created by lightroom it would be helpful - just let me know
I think Hayo is right here. HEIC metadata support in LightRoom may still be lacking.
- Phil
ahhhh got it. i think the link i was missing was that lightroom writing to an xmp sidecar necessarily meant (or at least did mean here) that it also can't correctly read heic metadata directly (or at least keywords). didn't realize those two things went hand in hand here. but, makes sense, and bummer but no big deal. my ocd self will manage to survive. thanks for talks thoughts!
If anyone stumbles upon this old thread of mine (as I just did looking for a related question), this is the current state of play:
(1) Hayo was 100% right - xmps remains the way to go with heics in lightroom. Simply run a -tagsfromfile for the subject field from the heic into the xmp and it'll show up just fine in lightroom. i just do whatever keywording or other metadata tinkering i need lightroom for, save it back to the xmp, and periodically i transfer it back into the heic files themselves.
(2) My related question re keywords showing up in Apple Photos also has been addressed since i posted originally back in May (i suspect this is the "proper" heic support Phil mentioned below - so, thanks Phil!!). No xmp sidecar needed for apple photos. If you just populate the subject tag and then import into apple photos, the keyword now shows up. FYI - if you're doing this without a mac (using just windows and iphone) - there are some quirks because some methods of saving simply saves, others do actual importing/processing. For HEICs - only way keywords show up in iphone apple photos search for me is if i import from dropbox/icloud using a siri shortcut. it does NOT seem to work to simply save photos from the files app (same with JPGs), and HEICs won't upload to icloud from the windows app yet. note that the same does NOT seem to work for JPEGs - the only way i've gotten jpg keywords to show up without a mac seems to be to upload to icloud from the windows version of the app.
Thanks again Phil - exiftool has brought my ocd little mind so much joy over the last couple years!
Sorry to revive a dead thread, but just thought this may be helpful to someone else as OCD as I am and trying to get their head around how HEIC files are handled :)