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_DaveEmerson_
Participant
December 18, 2005
Question

writing metadata keywords

  • December 18, 2005
  • 6 replies
  • 2767 views
I've written some scripts that can read and use metadata to do various things but I can't seems to modify the keyword list. When I try to reference the metaData.Keywords that I've succesfully read previously I get an exception. Is this data read only? I've seen lots of folks talk about modifying keywords but no example code.
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6 replies

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01af
Known Participant
September 29, 2006
Here's a JavaScript snippet I just wrote in order to write keywords into the metadata. It works the way Robert Stuck has suggested as the second option in post #1 in this thread (see above), i. e. it creates a temporary metadata template file and then deletes it after use. It should work on both Macintosh and Windows but I have tested it for Windows only. Here's the code:<br /><br />function SetKeywords(metadata, keywords)<br />{<br /> var strTmpl = "TempTmpl";<br /> var strUser = Folder.userData.absoluteURI;<br /> var filTmpl = new File(strUser + "/Adobe/XMP/Metadata Templates/" + strTmpl + ".xmp");<br /> var i = 0;<br /> var fResult = false;<br /><br /> try<br /> { if (filTmpl.exists)<br /> filTmpl.remove(); // maybe we should ask the user for permission to delete ...<br /> fResult = filTmpl.open("w");<br /> if (fResult)<br /> { filTmpl.writeln("<x:xmpmeta xmlns:x=\"adobe:ns:meta/\" x:xmptk=\"3.1.2-113\">");<br /> filTmpl.writeln(" <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#\">");<br /> filTmpl.writeln(" <rdf:Description rdf:about=\"\" xmlns:dc=\"http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/\">");<br /> filTmpl.writeln(" <dc:subject>");<br /> filTmpl.writeln(" <rdf:Bag>");<br /> if (keywords != null)<br /> for (i = 0; i < keywords.length; ++i)<br /> filTmpl.writeln(" <rdf:li>", keywords, "</rdf:li>");<br /> filTmpl.writeln(" </rdf:Bag>");<br /> filTmpl.writeln(" </dc:subject>");<br /> filTmpl.writeln(" </rdf:Description>");<br /> filTmpl.writeln(" </rdf:RDF>");<br /> filTmpl.writeln("</x:xmpmeta>");<br /> fResult = filTmpl.close();<br /> metadata.applyMetadataTemplate(strTmpl, "replace");<br /> filTmpl.remove();<br /> } }<br /> catch(e)<br /> { fResult = false; }<br /><br /> return fResult;<br />};<br /><br />Use it like this:<br /><br />var k = Array("Keyword1", "Keyword2", ... "KeywordN"); // an array of strings<br />var t = app.document.thumbnail; // for example<br />var m = t.synchronousMetadata; // metadata object to write the keywords into<br /><br />SetKeywords(m, k);<br /><br />To delete all keywords in m, simply pass the null object as the keyword array, like this:<br /><br />SetKeywords(m, null); // creates the empty keyword set<br /><br />Hope this helps,<br />Olaf
F
fivan
Inspiring
June 19, 2009

thanks!

Your script has saved me

Ivan

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_Roger_X_Howard_
Participant
April 21, 2006
Bob, Andrew,

I just found this thread after bumping into this issue myself. I'd been planning some integration with a controlled vocabulary database for Bridge, building a nice dynamic HTML interface displayed in a modeless dialog in Bridge - I hadn't tried to edit keywords programmatically until last night as I figured that was going to be the easy part!

So it seems there are two options:

1. Open each file in Photoshop for actual keyword assignment
2. Dynamically create metadata templates and then apply them in Bridge

Option 1 sounds impractical, at least for files which don't open/save directly in Photoshop, such as various RAW formats, so I think it's not useful for me.

Option 2 is possible, but seems quite a messy way of doing things, especially as the keyword assignments will be happening incrementally, so I'd be creating a new metadata template each time a user clicks a keyword, as each file a user works with will have an arbitrary mix of keywords, making a more efficient use of metadata templates impossible.

Are there any plans to plug this glaring hole in the Bridge DOM? It seems to me that one of Bridge's main areas of functionality is as a front-end to XMP metadata reading/writing.

Thanks for any thoughts,

Roger Howard
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_DaveEmerson_Author
Participant
December 19, 2005
Thanks for the fast response Bob and Andrew, I'll give these ideas a try.
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_Andrew-Hall_
Known Participant
December 18, 2005
To add to that, keywords in PS are an array which can be accessed via,

var keys = app.activeDocument.info.keywords;

modified by working with the array, and written to via:

app.activeDocument.info.keywords = keys;

Andrew
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_Andrew-Hall_
Known Participant
December 18, 2005
Hi Dave

You can write keywords in Photoshop - two of my scripts that do this can be found at:

http://www.ps-scripts.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=53

http://www.ps-scripts.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=149

The first in very much easier to understand and while it is made for CS it can easily be adapted to CS2 - and could be launched from Bridge using Bridge selections if required.

Andrew
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_Robert_Stucky_
Known Participant
December 18, 2005
Dave,

Sorry to say it, but the only metadata you can write using the Metadata Object directly are the simple types (name:value pairs). Keywords are stored as an RDF Bag, and can not be written.

The only way you can write complex types is with the applyMetadataTemplate( template, mode ) method (of the metadata object).

There are two options - first, create templates that contain only the keyword sets you want, then apply them in an "append" mode.

Second: Actually write the template from your script (not that hard to do - take a look at one of the templates - copy the keywords structure as a template, then fill it in with the correct details). Write the template, save it to the templates area, then apply it. If you don't want to clutter up your templates, delete the temporary template file when you're done.

The templates area is

Mac: /[User Lib]/application support/adobe/xmp/metadata templates

PC: c:\documents and settings\[USER]\application data\adobe\xml\metadata templates

Not the best news, but it's a way to get it done. Hope it'll work for you.

Bob
Adobe Workflow Scripting
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