Relationship between IPTC tags and category/subcategory keyword tags

Brilliant work-around - many thanks. I was puzzled why the "Remove IPTC Metadata" button didn't work as originally expected and even more puzzled after it did work when tested on a different file. I installed Metadata++ (Windows Freeware) to investigate and found there was a significant difference in the file on which the button did not work. This was one of a small number of files that contained previous IPTC tags before import into Photoshop Elements. I don't recall whether I imported these tags into my test setup or not and I don't know how those tags were added originally in 2011. Metadata++ showed the troublesome file contained an extra schema "XMS Microsoft Photo Schema" which contained entries including "Last keyword IPTC" and "Last Keyword XMP": both these entries listed the keywords that refused to be removed. In my test set-up the "Remove IPTC Metadata" button did remove one tag added by Organiser (plus the test Caption stored at <dc:description>). The two keyword tags that refused to be removed I must have added at some point during my testing in view of their names.

So my conclusion to date is that it is the presence of the these entries in the "XMS Microsoft Photo Schema" that stops Photoshop Elements Organiser removing tags from certain single files correctly. Perhaps Elements attempts the commanded removals but is not complely successful - perhaps due to Windows paying more attention to the "XMS Microsoft Photo Schema". In any event the Organiser information window should not show the tags as removed when the Editor File info correctly shows that they are not!

i have no idea what will happen when using the final setup on the iMac but I don't know enough about MacOS to attempt a similar investigation. I'll just stick gratefully to your work around.

Do you know if there is a way to hide the star rating in grid view and to right justify the file name (to assist in deciding which file version(s) to keep)?

PS I found that removing an Organiser "Places" tag removes all its text names but Metadata ++ showed that it leaves separate GPS tag fields populated with the GPS data associated with the tag - this is surely not what the user would expect.

PPS In case this is ever of interest, I found the Windows Freeware "duplicate & same files searcher" invaluable to identify and delete true duplicate files (using byte-by-byte comparison of files). It eventually reduced 1.4TB of photos to under 500GB.

Very helpful, many thanks.

Although my end objective is a collection of photos on an iMac where the Photoshop Elements (PSE) Installation is a couple of weeks old I am much more familiar with Windows. So I've now downloaded a trial copy of PSE for Windows to test some of my assumptions as you suggest.

Much to my surprise I found that in Organiser using "Remove IPTC Metadata" via the "Information" Tab only removes the tag(s) from the displayed Keyword box. Using both Windows File Manager and the full Editor "File Info" facility (special thanks for that tip) they have not been removed from the file. I tried in Organiser  right-click and select remove, on each tag shown against the file, then ctrl-W to write to file but still no removal resulted. I could remove the IPTC tags using Windows File Manager (or by using Editor "File Info") but only for one file at a time as far as I can see. Any clues on how to reliably remove IPTC tags using Organiser (for multiple files at once in case tagging errors need to be corrected in due course)?

PS In case this is of use to anyone, I found eventually a reasonable way to remove the many "picasaoriginals" folders in my old file set after first merging the contents (original photos) with the parent folder (edited photos). "Rightclicker Pro" for Windows can be setup so that one right-click on the "picasaoriginals" folder then one left-click (plus confirmations that duplicate filenames are to be kept/renamed) fixes each instance. I didn't find anything that will automate this for all instances of the picasaoriginals folder but these are easy to find where there is a ">" in the "lowest level" folder structure shown in the left pane of Windows File Manager.

Noted, thanks.

I've just done a test and found that what gets saved to file as IPTC metadata text (separated by ; ) is the text name of whatever Keyword item is drag/dropped onto the photo: no matter whether the Keyword item is a category or tag: I presume the same applies to subcategory etc. So if only a tag is drag/dropped its parent Category (etc) is omitted on writing tags to file

I'm trying to achieve redundancy to minimise the impact of any future catalog corruption (even though the catalog will be backed up by Apple TimeMachine and Photoshop Elements backup). It now seems the best way to do this is to ensure that tagging activity after importing files to the catalog includes drag/dropping every category/subcategory/etc box in the hierarchy above each final (right-most) tag. That way each file will contain the maximum amount of potentialy useful data for "future-proofing".

I also propose to export to file periodically, for retention, an xml version of the tag/categorory hierarchy on the assumption that if, after a disaster, I import this into a new catalog and then reimport all my files the correct tag-search arrangements will work in the new setup.

It seems that with Event tags only the text of the tag gets written to file as metadata - not the date range that I presume is recorded in the Elements Catalog.

With a Place tag my test showed that "UK; England; Bristol" was written to file as metadata after drag/droping the tag "Bristol" onto the photo.

I have not tested People tags as I don't plan to use face recognition: I have 170,000 files to import (once my keyword taxonomy is ready) so I've turned off all auto-analysis such as face recognition and curating.

I presume that any "Caption" and "Notes" data added in the "Information" column is recorded solely in the Organiser Catalog database?

As far as I know (and it will be difficult to find documentation about that feature), what is saved in the metadata IPTC section of the file is the text of the tag and separately the text of the category or subcategory (no hierarchy). That is not too bad since you can recover the correct information after reimporting in a catalog. For instance, if Paris is a tag in the France subcategory and Europe the category, you can combine those criteria to distinguish Paris in France or America or even the first name 'Paris'...

It's more realistic to think of the IPTC and tags management as independent in the IPTC and 'write metadata to files' and in the catalog.