Copy macos finder tags into <dc:subject><rdf:Bag>...

[Kai Mechel]

Hi,

I searched the forum and tried some things, but I can't get a solution yet.

What I have:
Files with macos Finder tags. I want these tags to go into

Code Select Expand

...
<dc:subject>
  <rdf:Bag>
    <rdf:li>keyword1</rdf:li>
    <rdf:li>keyword2</rdf:li>
  </rdf:Bag>
</dc:subject>

The only solution that I found is:

Code Select Expand

exiftool "-keywords<MDItemUserTags" -r /path/to/my/images
This writes the finder tags into keywords directly in the file.
So after this I have
- filename.cr2 (now with the finder tags added as keyword metadata)
- filename.cr2_original (the original file)

I used this as a workaround with Photo Mechanic (I leave out the extra steps).
And after this, I used the *_original files again (renamed back and cleaned up everything with a python script).

Now I wonder if it is possible that exiftool can write the same thing by itself into xml files instead of the file directly.

But I can't find the command for this, so that my finder tags end up inside an XMP file, as described above.

Any clues?

Best regards
Kai

[StarGeek]

Now I wonder if it is possible that exiftool can write the same thing by itself into xml files instead of the file directly.

But I can't find the command for this, so that my finder tags end up inside an XMP file, as described above.

If it is unknown that the XMP sidecars exist or not, then you can use Example #13 on the Metadata Sidecar Files page.  You just have to limit the scope to just the tags you want copied.

Try
exiftool -ext cr2 -tagsfromfile @ "-keywords<MDItemUserTags" -srcfile %d%f.xmp -r DIR

But I don't think you want to copy to Keywords in an XMP file, as that is XMP-pdf:Keywords, which is for PDF files.  As shown in your example XMP, the tag you want to copy to is Subject

exiftool -ext cr2 -tagsfromfile @ "-Subject<MDItemUserTags" -srcfile %d%f.xmp -r DIR

One thing to check for is if this command writes the data as one single keyword which requires use of the -sep option to split it properly or treats MDItemUserTags as a list type tag.  I'm not on a Mac so I can't check.

[Kai Mechel]

exiftool -ext cr2 -tagsfromfile @ "-Subject<MDItemUserTags" -srcfile %d%f.xmp -r DIR

Hi StarGeek,

it works! Your command above did the trick.

I also did not know that Keywords is for PDF files. So I was lucky, that Photo Mechanic read the keywords from the "PDF Keywords" field and put it in the correct Subject field (although I made a mistake in the beginning and wrote in into the wrong field, which you pointed out - learned something new, thanks for taking the time for the additional explanation).

But with your command, it's much less work.

I checked it with a test folder with 2 files in it.
Both files were processed and the multiple keywords of each file were written into separate keyword elements. Even finder tags with spaces are handled correctly.

Code Select Expand

...
<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x='adobe:ns:meta/' x:xmptk='Image::ExifTool 12.60'>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf='http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#'>

 <rdf:Description rdf:about=''
  xmlns:dc='http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/'>
  <dc:subject>
   <rdf:Bag>
    <rdf:li>keyword</rdf:li>
    <rdf:li>keyword with spaces</rdf:li>
   </rdf:Bag>
  </dc:subject>
 </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>
</x:xmpmeta>
...


[StarGeek]

I checked it with a test folder with 2 files in it.
Both files were processed and the multiple keywords of each file were written into separate keyword elements. Even finder tags with spaces are handled correctly.

Good to know.