Exported categories don't show up in "Edit IPTC/XMP..."

[jonha4711]

I have enabled the option to "Export DB Category to XMP Subject and IPTC Keyword" and enabled sub-option "Create XMP data".

I add some categories to a picture that has none so far. The image now has XMP tags which can be listed with ExifTool, for example. The tags are clearly there in the file.

I now open context menu option "Edit IPTC/XMP...". The XMP tags do not show up in this dialog. I do add them manually, save the tags and then again check the image with ExifTool. The tags in the file are unchanged but now they reliably show up in the "Edit IPTC/XMP..." dialog.

Something here is broken.

[Erixx haxx]

Hello:

Under "Edit IPTC/XMP>> Options switch it to "xmp only" or "xmp,update iptc" back to browser then see if they show up now when going inside edit.

[jonha4711]

This sort of works. If I change the "Edit IPTC/XMP... > Options" to XMP (I hope this is a sticky change!?) and then add a couple of simple categories they are afterwards indeed visible in this dialog.

However, what is still not visible, although the XMP tags are clearly in the image file and also shown in the XMP tab of XnViewMP, are the hierarchical category tags, ie everything tagged lr:hierarchicalSubject. No amount of fiddling the Options changes that.
Again, I have to add them manually in this dialog but the XMP tags in the file itself are completely unchanged after saving. So somewhere there seems to be a sync problem.

Also, if I add hierarchical tags with an external program (say exiftool) they will not show up in this dialog, whatever Options I select. "View > Update Catalog from Files" does nothing. What is this option supposed to do?

Needless to say, most of my images have or will have hierarchical categories.

[Erixx haxx]

Hello:

I agree. I think better descriptors in the edit box options would help us understand what xnviewmp is doing here..
If you add the word "Read" or "Use" in front of the four choices in the pull-down its makes more sense. This is how I took it to mean.
I could be wrong though..

Another thing is, lots of sections, panels and even tabs act more like plugins rather than part of the software as a whole.

[xnview]

This sort of works. If I change the "Edit IPTC/XMP... > Options" to XMP (I hope this is a sticky change!?) and then add a couple of simple categories they are afterwards indeed visible in this dialog.

However, what is still not visible, although the XMP tags are clearly in the image file and also shown in the XMP tab of XnViewMP, are the hierarchical category tags, ie everything tagged lr:hierarchicalSubject. No amount of fiddling the Options changes that.
Again, I have to add them manually in this dialog but the XMP tags in the file itself are completely unchanged after saving. So somewhere there seems to be a sync problem.

Could you send me the file used, and the way to reproduce?

Also, if I add hierarchical tags with an external program (say exiftool) they will not show up in this dialog, whatever Options I select. "View > Update Catalog from Files" does nothing. What is this option supposed to do?

IPTC/XMP keywords are readed and added to the catalog

[jonha4711]

Let me begin by saying that this problem only concerns hierarchical tags/categories (ie those stored in XMP tag lr:hierarchicalSubject) and not those stored in dc:Subject. The latter do work although I agree with Erixx haxx that it'd be good if we actually knew what the options in "Edit IPTC/XMP... > Options" do.

Could you send me the file used, and the way to reproduce?

No need to do that. Just define two top-level categories Test1 and Test2, and add to the latter a subcategory Test2Sub. Select an image w/o any categories and add all three categories and you will see that in the XMP tags tab both dc and lr tags will show up. If you then open the "Edit IPTC/XMP..." dialog only the dc values show up under the Keywords tab. (All this requires that option "Export DB Category to XMP Subject and IPTC Keyword" and sub-option "Create XMP data" are set. Also set "Edit IPTC/XMP... > Options" to XMP only.)

IPTC/XMP keywords are readed and added to the catalog.

That is not correct. They are read and added IF they are in dc:Subject but NOT if in lr:hierarchicalSubject. That's exactly my point: XnVewMP definitely writes hierarchical subjects to the XMP tags but they do not show up in the "Edit IPTC/XMP..." dialog.

[xnview]

That is not correct. They are read and added IF they are in dc:Subject but NOT if in lr:hierarchicalSubject. That's exactly my point: XnVewMP definitely writes hierarchical subjects to the XMP tags but they do not show up in the "Edit IPTC/XMP..." dialog.

XnViewMP write dc and lr, read dc AND lr. Please post screenshots to show the problem?

[jonha4711]

XnViewMP write dc and lr, read dc AND lr. Please post screenshots to show the problem?

OK, another attempt to explain what happens. Let's start with the following categories:
Europe
World
Local
Other
..Test
....Local

There are four main categories; Test is a subcategory of Other and Local a subcategory of Test.

No photo has any categories defined. I select one photo and click on category Local (option "Automatically apply parent keywords" is set, so categories Test and Other are now auto-selected).
The categories tab and the dialog to Edit IPTC/XMP now look like this:

Please note that the Edit dialog shows no hierarchical tags although they are visible in the XMP tab:

pic2.png (5.21 KiB) Viewed 1603 times

Now I copy the image file to a temp directory and delete the image file from within XnViewMP, The categories in Categories Filter are duly removed:

pic3.png (5.39 KiB) Viewed 1603 times

Now I copy the image file back into the original directory; I have set the option to "Import XMP subject or IPTC keyword to DB categories". After this, sometimes the categories in the Categories tab are updated and sometimes they are not (it is not clear what triggers this). What is worse is that Categories Filter shows the categories as expected:

but when I then select one of the categories (here Local) the image is not shown in <DB result>. This is reproducible and happens even after a restart.

[xnview]

Please note that the Edit dialog shows no hierarchical tags although they are visible in the XMP tab:

yes right, there is no way to show hierarchical keywords in 'Edit IPTC'

Now I copy the image file back into the original directory; I have set the option to "Import XMP subject or IPTC keyword to DB categories". After this, sometimes the categories in the Categories tab are updated and sometimes they are not (it is not clear what triggers this). What is worse is that Categories Filter shows the categories as expected:
but when I then select one of the categories (here Local) the image is not shown in <DB result>. This is reproducible and happens even after a restart.

We can see that Other, Test & Local has a picture file. If you click on Other or Test, same thing??
I can't reproduce, it always works for me...

[jonha4711]

We can see that Other, Test & Local has a picture file. If you click on Other or Test, same thing??
I can't reproduce, it always works for me...

I can click on any of those categories and the image, though existing, will not show as <DB result>. Strangely, this is entirely reproducible here. If you do have some ideas as to what may cause this discrepancy I can test further.

[xnview]

We can see that Other, Test & Local has a picture file. If you click on Other or Test, same thing??
I can't reproduce, it always works for me...

I can click on any of those categories and the image, though existing, will not show as <DB result>. Strangely, this is entirely reproducible here. If you do have some ideas as to what may cause this discrepancy I can test further.

if you start with a clean database, same problem?

[jonha4711]

if you start with a clean database, same problem?

Yes, this works correctly.

All that illustrates my bigger point and the starting point for all this trouble: the database, even for 30,000+ images, can be easily re-created because almost all the information is in the EXIF information in the files. The one glaring exception are categories. So, if I ever end up with a fishy database (as I may have now) and HAVE to recreate it... all that work of assigning categories may be lost.I should be able to recreate them from the XMP files but so far that process seems too brittle to trust.

[xnview]

if you start with a clean database, same problem?

Yes, this works correctly.

and you can reproduce the problem?

[jonha4711]

and you can reproduce the problem?

As I wrote:

Yes, this works correctly.

So yes, with a fresh, empty database it works. Alas, my database is not empty and simply recreating it may not always be an option, see my post immediately above.

We seem to have come full circle.

[xnview]

is it possible to have the database?