ExifTool Misinterprets UTF-8 IPTC Metadata as Latin-1 When Extracting Data

[ebben]

First: Thank you so much for a great piece of software!

ExifTool writes UTF-8 encoded IPTC metadata correctly, but when extracting metadata, it displays it incorrectly as Latin-1, leading to corrupted characters (ÆØÃ... instead of ÆØÅ).

I used ExifTool Version 13.10 (latest via Homebrew) on macOS Sonoma. I tested the results in macOS Preview and Photoshop.

Steps to Reproduce:

I applied metadata using this command:

exiftool -overwrite_original -charset IPTC=UTF8 \
-IPTC:Keywords="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
-XMP-dc:Subject="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
-XMP-dc:Title="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
-XMP-dc:Description="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
-Caption-Abstract="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
-IPTC:Caption-Abstract="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
-Country="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
-IPTC:Country-PrimaryLocationName="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
-Creator="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
-IPTC:By-line="Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ" \
sample-image.jpg

Extracting the metadata in ExifTool:

exiftool -G1 -s -IPTC:Keywords -XMP-dc:Subject -XMP-dc:Title -XMP-dc:Description -Caption-Abstract sample-image.jpg

Output:

Code Select Expand

[IPTC]          Keywords                        : Sample text ÆØÃ...Ä�ŊŠŦ æøåÄ'ŋšŧ
[XMP-dc]        Subject                         : Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ
[XMP-dc]        Title                           : Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ
[XMP-dc]        Description                     : Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ
[IPTC]          Caption-Abstract                : Sample text ÆØÃ...Ä�ŊŠŦ æøåÄ'ŋšŧ
Photoshop & macOS Preview display the IPTC metadata correctly (as "Sample text ÆØÅĐŊŠŦ æøåđŋšŧ").

ExifTool misinterprets its own stored data.

[StarGeek]

Add
-CodedCharacterSet=UTF8

From FAQ #10, How does ExifTool handle coded character sets?

if CodedCharacterSet exists and has a value of "UTF8" (or "ESC % G") then string values are assumed to be stored as UTF‑8. Otherwise the internal IPTC encoding is assumed to be Windows Latin1 (cp1252)

[Phil Harvey]

StarGeek beat me to it, but here was the response that I composed:

This is explained in the IPTC section of FAQ #10.

Instead of properly setting IPTC:CodedCharacterSet to UTF8, you are using -charset iptc=utf8 which writes UTF8 to IPTC but doesn't record the character set.  If you do this, you will need to use -charset iptc=utf8 when reading back again unless the file happens to have CodedCharacterSet already set properly.

- Phil