IFD0 and IFD1 Artist and XMP2EXIF.args

[Mac2]

I have a Fuji RAF with two IFDs, both containing an empty Artist tag.

1. I run EXIF2XMP.args to map EXIF into XMP. ExifTool here does a -XMP-dc:Creator < EXIF:Artist
This produces, correctly, an empty XMP-dc:Creator

2. My software updates XMP-dc:Creator with a value and also updates some other tags.

3. I let my software write back the XMP data and run XMP2EXIF.args to map changes done to XMP back to EXIF.
ExifTool here does a -EXIF:Artist < XMP-dc:Creator, which looks like the perfect counterpart of what is used in EXIF2XMP.

The file afterwards contains:

[IFD0]          Artist                          : My Author Info
[IFD1]          Artist                          :

4. But when I run exiftool -G1 -EXIF:Artist I get

[IFD1]          Artist                          :

so the contents of IFD1 are preferred. When I now re-import the EXIF data into XMP via EXIF2XMP.args, the existing dc:Creator is wiped out. This is unexpected.

It seems that ExifTool prefers to map XMP-dc:Creator into IFD0, but uses IFD1 when mapping EXIF to XMP?
I'm sure there is a good reason for this.

And as far as I recall, this problem has been reported only once so far in my user community so multiple Artist tags are not that common.
But I wonder if I'm doing something wrong or if need to add a flag or something...?

[StarGeek]

I believe that Artist in IFD1 is non-standard.  A similar thing happens with some Sony cameras placing a ModifyDate tag in IFD1.

Because of this, you have to explicitly state that you want to use IFD1:Aritist on the command line to edit/remove it.

The reason that exiftool seems to prefer that tag is because of the order it appears in the file.  Because IFD1 is going to come after IFD0, the second Artist tag replaces the first in the output.  That's why you need the -a (-duplicates) option to see all the tags.

My suggestion would be to straight up remove the second occurrence to avoid problems in the future
exiftool -IFD1:Artist= /path/to/files/

[Mac2]

The remove the superfluous Artist tag from the file manually was also my advice to the user reporting the problem.
This fixes the issue nicely, and I have seen this particular issue only once so far. Typical metadata mess 

I just wondered if I was missing something - happened in the past... 
Thanks for taking the time to respond!

[StarGeek]

I just wondered if I was missing something - happened in the past... 

It just might have happened before.  There's this previous post where someone had problems updating Artist in a RAF file.  They just never followed up on it.

[Mac2]