Pb with selective keywords removal from EXIF Keywords

[Lagrandeimage]

Hello all,

I want to remove certain keywords from the metadata of image files.

I read in a post on the forum that this was possible using the following command :

exiftool -keywords-=one -keywords-=two DIR.

So I went into a directory and entered :

exiftool -keywords-=XXX -keywords-=YYY *.jpg

I got the following messages :

19 image files updated
19 image files unchanged

And the tags were still there.

Any idea how I can solve this?

[StarGeek]

In what way are they still there?  Do they show up when you look at the output from exiftool or is it another program?

If the latter, then run this command (see FAQ #3) and look at the full output to see if the keywords are stored at another location as well
exiftool -g1 -a -s /path/to/files/

Keywords are commonly saved in multiple places, including IPTC:Keywords, XMP:Subject, and HierarchicalSubject.

[Lagrandeimage]

Hello,

Thank you for your reply.

I looked at the output of the command you gave and the tags are present in two fields > IPTC Keywords AND XPM-dc Subject.

Running the -keywords-=XXX command only deletes the IPTC Keywords. is it possible to delete also the XPM-dc Subject Keywords.

On a sidenote: how do I do ik keywords are two words (eg. The house), what is the syntax?

Thanks in advance,

Cheers!

[Phil Harvey]

Running the -keywords-=XXX command only deletes the IPTC Keywords. is it possible to delete also the XPM-dc Subject Keywords.

Add -subject-=XXX or -xmp-dc:subject-=XXX to the command.

On a sidenote: how do I do ik keywords are two words (eg. The house), what is the syntax?

See FAQ 2.

- Phil

[Lagrandeimage]

OK that works just great! Thanks a lot Phil

Now the more difficult question (at least for me) :

Instead of passing one by one the tags to erase on the command line with -keywords=XXX, can I feed the command from a file where I have all the keywords I want to erase? Because I have tens of tags to erase from thousands of photos.

Thans in advance!

[StarGeek]

On a sidenote: how do I do ik keywords are two words (eg. The house), what is the syntax?

See Writing Examples.  Use single quotes if you're using Mac/Linux/Windows Powershell, double quotes when using Windows CMD.

Instead of passing one by one the tags to erase on the command line with -keywords=XXX, can I feed the command from a file where I have all the keywords I want to erase? Because I have tens of tags to erase from thousands of photos.

Use the -@ (Argfile) option.  Place each part of the command on a separate line in a test file and then call that text file with -@ /path/to/file.txt.  Unlike the command line, you don't use any quotes in an arg file.

For example, you're arg file would look like

Code Select Expand

-Keyword-=The House
-Subject-=The House
-Keyword-=The Garden
-Subject-=The Garden
And then your command would be
exiftool -@ /path/to/file.txt /path/to/files/

The keywords are case sensitive, so if the keyword is THE HOUSE, you can't remove it with -keywords-=the house.

[Lagrandeimage]

Hello,

Just awesome ! Thanks a lot, I am going to try that.

Cheers.