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J
JSchaub
Participating Frequently
May 16, 2018
Answered

Missing Keywords that were added to photos with Bridge

  • May 16, 2018
  • 1 reply
  • 1189 views

My coworkers and I add keywords to thousands of photos and video each year. We started adding keywords in 2015 and now it is 2018. We started noticing this year as we search by keywords we created our results are zero or only photos/videos from this year.  I pulled up the files from previous years and it now shows there are no keywords associated with the images.  What happened to our added keywords and is there a way to recover them in the photos we previously added to? How can we prevent this from happening again?

This topic has been closed for replies.
Correct answer PECourtejoie

When you try to perform the same thing now, what does happen? Then, open one file in Photoshop, and go to file>file info...


I would have to check to see if working on the network requires some settings in Bridge... there is no mention of the word in How to view & manage files in Adobe Bridge neither on Adobe Bridge system requirements  (besides for activation)

1 reply

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 17, 2018

You first need to confirm if this is just a cache/display issue – or if the keywords are truly missing from the files.

_________________

Step 1) To inspect a file, select the file and then use the File > File Info command and then look under the “raw data” category.

You should see an entry similar to:

<dc:subject>
            <rdf:Bag>
              <rdf:li>My Keyword</rdf:li>
            </rdf:Bag>
</dc:subject>

If you don’t see any similar entry, then you may need to use another method to be really sure, such as ExifTool.

Where you may find “alternative or legacy” metadata entries used by Bridge and or other software, such as:

[XMP-lr] HierarchicalSubject
[IPTC] Keywords
[IFD0] XPSubject

_________________

Step 2) To check if this is just a display issue:

In the current folder, use the Tools > Cache > Purge cache for… command to rebuild the display of the viewed folder (preview images, metadata etc). Do you now see the keywords?

J
JSchaubAuthor
Participating Frequently
May 17, 2018

I tried both methods and I am still not getting the keywords. When I am looking at the raw data info I can not find the keyword script that in the files.

I am noticing that the files with the missing keywords are from Adobe CS6 which is what we used prior to upgrading to CC.  It doesn't make sense that upgrading software would erase all keywords added in the JPG files. So basically all our photos from 2016 and earlier no longer have keywords attached to them.

Stephen Marsh
Community Expert
Stephen MarshCommunity Expert
Community Expert
May 17, 2018

What file formats are you using?

Rendered files such as JPEG, TIFF, PSD etc?

Or raw camera data files such as CR2, NEF, ORF etc?

You also mention video, which generally has limited metadata support in formats such as MOV or possibly MP4 but not many other formats.

Were you using the camera raw database or XMP sidecar files?

Again, I’d use ExifTool for a final analysis before making any hard decisions.

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