found a feature (?) while deleting tags

[tm]

on this cloudy sunday i'm trying again to improve our workflow with tif-files in our catalogue-production.

workflow in a nutshell:
- we're all using adobe photoshop + bridge (cs4 and cs5)
- photographer takes canon-raw-files which are automatically tagged with the computer-name which he uses (i.e. PC119) into the Creator Field of "IPTC Core" (shown in adobe brigde)
- the postproduction unit tags one or more Codes into the "IPTC Core" field "Keywords" (i.e. #M123;#0555)
- we deliver the files to a firm who do the colorcorrection and the clipping (they leave a clipping path called "Path1"in the files)
- we get back the files and delete the Creator+Keyword-Taggs manually in Adobe Bridge
- we deliver the files to the agency


Here's the problem:
I'm trying to get rid of the entries in the "Creator" and "Keywords" Field of the shown IPTC Core and after several tries I found out, that these information are not only in the iptc but obviously also in other fields, so after I figured out where they are and here's a list:

By-line                         : PC119
Artist                          : PC119
Creator                         : PC119

and the Keywords:

Subject                         : #A5NK, #A62F
Hierarchical Subject            : Main Color|#A62F, Stripes|#A5NK
Keywords                        : #A5NK, #A62F

Do I have to delete all these fields like (in applescript):

do shell script "exiftool -iptc:keywords= " & filename
do shell script "exiftool -hierarchicalSubject= " & filename
do shell script "exiftool -subject= " & filename

and

do shell script "exiftool -artist= " & filename
do shell script "exiftool -xmp:creator= " & filename
do shell script "exiftool -iptc:by-line= " & filename

or is there another way to get rid of them?

I tried this one:

do shell script "exiftool -all= --icc_profile:all " & filename  which seems to be cool, but i found out that it deletes the clipping path, too ... stupid.



That led me to another question:

is it possible to find out the name of the field wich stores the information about the clipping path? and maybe use this info to check if they forgot the clipping path or used a wrong name?!

[Phil Harvey]

It is very inefficient to delete the tags in separate commands.  You should do all this in one command (and do multiple files too if possible):

exiftool -iptc:keywords= -hierarchicalSubject= -subject= FILE1 FILE2 FILE3 ...

About the clipping paths.  These aren't extracted by default, but you can do this with user-defined tags.  see this post for a config file that will do this.

- Phil

[tm]

Thanks for the advice! It works, and is obviously much better than separate commands.

I'll have a look on that clipping path thing.

Have a nice sunday.
sebastian.