Too many Comment and Description Fields to choose from. Which to keep?

[odog502]

Here's another post similar to my last one about time zones.  This one is about Comment/Description Fields.  Several years ago when I started adding comments to photos with ExifTool I figured(probably with insufficient research) that the fields to use were IFD0:XPComment, File:Comment, ExifIFD:UserComment.  I thought "that should cover most everything!"  It seems that those are not relevant anymore(or perhaps never were).  Now I've learned it is IFD0:ImageDescription, XMP-dc:Description, IPTC:Caption-Abstract that I should be using.  This brings up a few questions.

• Using 6 fields containing the same description seems excessively redundant.  Does it make sense to keep all of these updated or should I cease using the older ones?  Is there any difference in the type of data that was intended to be stored in each of these?
  
     a) IFD0:XPComment - I remember including this because that was what would show in the file properties through Windows Explorer in Windows XP.  That doesn't seem to be a relevant field anymore.  I assume this one is probably the safest to stop using and even completely remove from the metadata.
  
     b) File:Comment -  I don't know why I used this one.  I see in an earlier post where you described its purpose, but I can no longer identify any software that would need or use this field.
  
     c) ExifIFD:UserComment This one still seems relevant but perhaps I've been using it wrong.  Im not sure what the expected difference in content is between ExifIFD:UserComment and IFD0:ImageDescription.  They both are displayed next to each other as "Comments" and "Subject" respectively in Windows Explorer so I assume a difference was intended.  Is ImageDescription supposed to be about the content of the photo?(e.g. "This is a picture of X people at the Y event") And UserComment supposed to be more meta about of the picture?(e.g. "This time stamp might be off by 10 minutes" or "I used the wrong ISO setting for this photo")
  
  


• On a semi related note. Do you know of any software(DAM or just image viewer) that displays descriptions during photo slideshow? I see the topic was brought up before, but the conversation went in a different direction.
  

[Phil Harvey]

1.Using 6 fields containing the same description seems excessively redundant.  Does it make sense to keep all of these updated or should I cease using the older ones?  Is there any difference in the type of data that was intended to be stored in each of these?

I would drop XPComment and Comment.  They are both effectively superseded by EXIF:UserComment.  But I would use the Description tags for image descriptions.

2. On a semi related note. Do you know of any software(DAM or just image viewer) that displays descriptions during photo slideshow?

No, but then I haven't looked.

- Phil

[Hayo Baan]

For your first question, I would suggest to use the description and caption-abstract set of tags.

For your second question you could use e.g., PhotoMechanic their slideshows allow you to add various attributes as text. But I'm quite positive Lightroom and others are capable of showing e.g., captions as well.

[odog502]

Thanks for the responses.  I really appreciate the speed and helpfulness!

The only remaining question is on the difference between ExifIFD:UserComment and IFD0:ImageDescription.  Are these redundant properties?  Or are they intended to hold different types of information?

[Hayo Baan]

UserComment and ImageDescription are not (typically) used for the same thing. The three tags you mentioned (ImageDescription, Description, CaptionAbstract), however, are so ideally should be set together. For more info have a look at the MWG option and its description. This might explain/solve some of your questions as to these field overlaps better than I can do here.