Conflict with Photo Mechanic on keywording?

[dd-b]

When I add a keyword with Photo Mechanic 5.0 to a .RW2 file (raw file from Panasonic LX3), PM creates an XMP file, and updates that, not the .RW2 file.  But it then shows the keyword on that image in all its various views and so forth.

However, exiftool -keywords <that file>* doesn't show the keyword for either file (it does find the right two files, but reports no keywords in either of them). 

Code Select Expand

$ exiftool -keywords ddb\ 20090325\ 010-002*
======== ddb 20090325 010-002-orig.rw2
======== ddb 20090325 010-002-orig.xmp
    2 image files read


PM has stored the keyword info in the "Subject" pocket apparently; here's that XMP:

Code Select Expand

<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x="adobe:ns:meta/" x:xmptk="XMP Core 5.1.2">
<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/"
    xmlns:photoshop="http://ns.adobe.com/photoshop/1.0/"
    xmlns:xmp="http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/"
    xmlns:photomechanic="http://ns.camerabits.com/photomechanic/1.0/"
    xmlns:aux="http://ns.adobe.com/exif/1.0/aux/"
   photoshop:DateCreated="2009-03-27T12:59:34"
   xmp:CreateDate="2009-03-27T12:59:34"
   xmp:Label="Typical"
   xmp:Rating="0"
   photomechanic:ColorClass="5"
   photomechanic:Tagged="False"
   photomechanic:Prefs="0:5:0:000926"
   photomechanic:PMVersion="PM5"
   aux:ImageNumber="926">
   <dc:subject>
    <rdf:Bag>
     <rdf:li>test002</rdf:li>
    </rdf:Bag>
   </dc:subject>
  </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>
</x:xmpmeta>


And "ExifTool -subject" does find it, even (and does NOT find a "subject" in the RW2 file).  Photoshop does show the keyword, and puts it the same place it puts "normal" keywords that Exiftool can find.

My preliminary analysis is that PM and Adobe are in on something Exiftool is not?

[StarGeek]

Subject is the XMP tag for keywords.  Keywords tag is the older IPTC legacy tag.  Most modern software will write to both.  Windows and Lightroom do this, for example.  You'll probably find similar situations with IPTC:Caption-Abstract and XMP:Description and XMP:Rights and IPTC:CopyrightNotice, among many others.

You can check the IPTC Photo Metadata pdf for correlations. 

To copy between IPTC and XMP tags, check out the Arg files.

[dd-b]

Ah, details!  Understanding better tends to help me, yeah.  This isn't bad by the standards of standards, either.  Thanks for the useful pointer!