Can't enter Keywords in some jpeg files

[Rui_MuseuPtm]

Hello there,

I work in a Museum and it's important for us to insert keywords in our image files to better find and organize our very large and growing digital archive.

In some jpeg files, when we try to insert keywords in Bridge, we get a message saying "a error occured saving metadata".

I managed to work around it by opening in Photoshop and just saving as itself. These images, when opened in Photoshop, give a message saying "this file contains data that couldn't be read and was ignored". After overwriting the file in Photoshop it's all good.

But when you have 5683(so far) images to enter keywords one by one, because they have diferent keywords, and all of a sudden some hundred files can't be edited and have to be opened and resaved. it's annoying to say the least.

We have the latest version of Bridge, but in two computers we still have one cs3 and one cs4 version and in those versions the problem doesn't exist. But we want to update Bridge on those compputers because it's a more stable version of the software, albeit the issue we're reporting on this message.

Thanks

[Stephen_A_Marsh]

Resaving JPEG files is not “best practice” however it may not be the end of the world either if you don’t change compression levels/methods, crop or resample or perform other edits. I would recommend a method that does not affect the image data… I have some ideas on how this may be handled using ExifTool. Can you provide a file share link (DropBox or similar) or send me a private message and you can then email me a test image that has the error and the re-saved version that does not have this error?

P.S. Do you have backup/archival/disaster recovery in place for your image collection?

[Rui_MuseuPtm]

Dropbox - Bridge

​Here is a link with 2 files, one that doesn't let me enter keywords and one resaved version on which i entered a keyword that it didn't have before.

​There are keywords already in the first version of the image that we had entered when we were trying diferent sofwares. At the time we were more in favor of using Pro Photo Tools. But after a series of tests Bridge was more reliable and user friendly. We tried ExifTool also, but i think that it doesn't work as bridge, in terms of organizing, managing, searching and viewing at the same time.

​And yes we do have a backup of the image collection.

​Thanks in advance,

​Rui Nicolau

[Stephen_A_Marsh · Accepted solution]

Hi Rui,

I was referring to ExifTool as a means to diagnose and repair the problem images, rather than as a keywording or other metadata tool.

Yes, the file is messed up, ExifTool reports the following when reading the metadata:

exiftool -a -G1 -s A354_01.jpg

[ExifTool]      Warning      : [minor] Fixed incorrect URI for xmlns:MicrosoftPhoto

[ExifTool]      Warning      : Bad IPTC data tag (marker 0x0)

The line in red would appear to be the issue as ExifTool can correct the minor error.

I then tried to write metadata to the file, and an error was returned:

exiftool -IPTC:CopyrightNotice='Museu de Portimão' A354.jpg

Warning: [Minor] Unrecognized data in IPTC padding - A354.jpg

    0 image files updated

    1 image files unchanged

Even ExifTool has problems writing metadata to the file, it is not just Adobe Bridge.

Next, I rebuilt the metadata in the file with the following command (the actual image data remains unchanged):

exiftool -all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe -icc_profile A354.jpg

Warning: [minor] Fixed incorrect URI for xmlns:MicrosoftPhoto - A354_01.jpg

    1 image files updated

The image will now allow metadata to be written to it!

As I have only seen one image, I don't know if this is an ongoing issue with files that have been handled by Microsoft Pro Photo Tools or not. If you do see a pattern here, then you may be able to find these files and action them or stop using the software etc.

So, I see two ways forward:

1) Keep going as you are, when you find an image with this error, move it to a folder which you will then use the ExifTool commands to rebuild the metadata for the entire folder of problem images. Or just rebuild the metadata one image at a time when you come over it, depending on what is best for your workflow.

2) Run the ExifTool commands to rebuild the metadata over your entire image collection (which is why I asked if you have a backup).

Please feel free to ask further questions if required.