Remove selective IPTC Keywords

[amitinddr]

Hey Phil
Can you help me with command to remove selective IPTC keywords? So for example if I have a set of 2000 images with 400 of them having a particular keyword "System", I would just like to remove the Keyword system so that 400 images turn without any IPTC keywords whereas remaining 1600 retain the Keywords.

PS: I am using ExifTool GUI. Direct command for that will help best please.

Thanks
Amit

[Phil Harvey]

Hi Amit,

I think this is the command you want:

exiftool -keywords-="System" DIR

where DIR is the directory containing the images.

In ExifTool GUI direct, you should leave off the "exiftool" and directory specification.

- Phil

[amitinddr]

Thanks Phil
Seems they are added in XPKeywords as well. Will this work to remove them from XPKeywords? Did not work for me

exiftool -XPKeywords-="System" DIR

[Phil Harvey]

No.  XPKeywords is not a list-type tag.

You must do something like this instead to edit the string value:

exiftool "-xpkeywords<${xpkeywords;s/( ,)?System( ,)?//}" ...

This removes "System" from the string, and any leading or trailing ", " delimiters.

- Phil

[amitinddr]

Phil this is not working for me. It is instead adding s/( as a new keyword.

[Phil Harvey]

What version of ExifTool are you using?  This feature was added in version 9.15.

- Phil

Edit:  Also, I got the delimiters wrong.  This is a bit trickier than I thought.  Try this:

exiftool "-xpkeywords<${xpkeywords;s/^System, //;s/, System$//;s/, System, /, /}" -xpkeywords-=System ...

This handles the keyword at the start, end, or middle of the string properly, and deletes XPKeywords if it is the only keyword.

[amitinddr]

I am using latest, 9.53

[amitinddr]

System is the only keyword. There are no other keywords for same file and I want to remove System.

[Phil Harvey]

Oh.  Then simply -xpkeywords-=System should work.

I need more details to figure out the problem.   This is what I get:

Code Select Expand

> exiftool a.jpg -xpkeywords
XP Keywords                     : System
> exiftool a.jpg -xpkeywords-=System
    1 image files updated
> exiftool a.jpg -xpkeywords
>

- Phil

[amitinddr]

Worked like a charm. Thanks

[Phil Harvey]

OK, so what changed?  You tried exactly this in a previous post.

- Phil

[amitinddr]

Yes, seems updating the Exiftool version helped.

Something new here - My IPTC keywords are being shown as keyword1*keyword2 whereas in XPKeywords they are shown as Keyword1;Keyword 2. Is there a way I can have them as

IPTC
Keywords: Keyword1
Keywords: Keyword2

Thanks
Amit

[Phil Harvey]

No, sorry.  But you can change the IPTC Keywords delimiter to whatever you want with the -sep option.

- Phil