Semicolons instead of commas when tagging images in PS, LR and BR

Question

Hi &#128578;when tagging images in PS, LR or BR commas get converted automatically to semicolons.  My client needs commas as seperators for recognizing keywords to where the images will get uploaded.  Can I change that behaviour (automatically changing commas to semicolons, keeping commas)?Thanks, BR Andre

Andre_27 · Accepted Answer

I have attached 3 modified versions of your files. I used ExifTool to remove the original subject and keyword metadata. I then re-wrote the subject/keywords to the "clean" files using ExifTool. This is purely as a test to see if your client has any different results with metadata generated in other software:

exiftool-subject.jpg = only subject metadata, no iptc keywords

exiftool-keywords.jpg = only legacy iptc keywords, no subject metadata

exiftool-both-subject-keywords.jpg = both forms of metadata

Don't open/resave these in Photoshop or other Adobe software (otherwise the metadata would be invalid for this test), just see how they are handled as is.

It will be interesting to see if your client has issues with these files.

Please do come back with the findings!

Hey Stephen,

sorry for the late answer, the mills grind slowly here. The client said they'll tag metadata themselves after data delivery from my side without further notice of reasoning, which is cool because I don't have to deal with tagging anymore 🙂 and I don't feel inclined to dig deeper unless they want me to. I believe they found out the obvious – their proprietary approach doesn't work with the XMP Standard, therefore it's best to tag within their system than not being able to correctly capture externally tagged files.

Thank you and best regards

Andre

Stephen Marsh · Answer

This is just display-related, different software uses different methods to show metadata.

Yes, Adobe uses semi-colons. So too does Windows file properties.

ExifTool shows a comma for the same file. So does the macOS Finder.

Apple Preview uses a line break.

Gimp, like Preview, uses separate lines without any "separator" visible.

Finally, looking at the underlying XMP metadata for DC:Subject you can see the raw structure:

<dc:subject>
    <rdf:Bag>
        <rdf:li>one</rdf:li>
        <rdf:li>two</rdf:li>
        <rdf:li>three</rdf:li>
    </rdf:Bag>
</dc:subject>

As a founding member of the MWG, Adobe software will also write the DC:Subject info to the legacy IPTC:Keywords metadata for compatibility with software that does not read to the current standard.

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