Still unanswered - How to get Organizer to write image tags to image IPTC Keywords in the order of the hierarchy

[Ed_on_Essentials]

Hi,

I have raised this issue before but Adobe Support said it did not exist and would not respond to my video below.  The support person dealing with it was Piyush.

Please see the previous thread....https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2568180

This video is made using Organizer Elements 2019 (v17).  The issue exists.

In short, the order of the Tags written to the Keywords property of the file are not in the order of the hierarchy.  I am not using People, Places or Events tags of Organizer.  Only the custom "Tags" which are saved to the "Keywords" property of the file (Ctrl+W). These are not saved in the order of the hierarchy, rather it is some random order that I have not managed to understand.

Surely, it would make sense that these are written to the file's property in the same order as the hierarchy created?  That way, looking at the properties of the file separate from Organizer would have some meaning.  Please look at the file.

I look forward to contributions on this query; and perhaps Adobe can acknowledge this issue.

Regards, Ed

[99jon]

Hi Ed. Thanks for the interesting experiment and video demo.

I think the categories are simply for organizing within the catalog rather like placing items in albums and not for writing to IPTC as a hierarchy. What you have effectively done is to turn your categories into keywords by dragging them on to the image.  When selecting an image it is normal to see only keywords listed with their category shown to the left of the keyword tag as a symbol. Your image tag list shows that you have duplicated the categories as keywords which is why they are all comma separated when saved to IPTC.

[Ed_on_Essentials]

Hi 99jon <https://forums.adobe.com/people/99jon>

Thank you for your message.

The Categories, Sub-categories and Keywords form part of the image's

metadata and writing this to the file's properties (the IPTC Information

Interchange Model) is standard functionality of Organizer (see Ctl+W or

File->Save Metata to File) so I believe that is what it is meant for.

What Organizer is not doing is writing this metadata information based on

the Category, Sub-Category and Keyword hierarchy order; rather, it is some

other order which appears muddled when looking at it cold.

To my mind, it makes sense for this metadata to be written in the Category,

Sub-Category and Keyword hierarchy order. Ironically, Adobe does not

disagree with this. Where we're disagreeing is that it doesn't actually do

that.

The background is that I share my pictures with people who do not have

Organizer and when they look at the file's properties it does not make

sense as events are listed next to places or ratings or other observations;

like people. If the Category, Sub-Category and Keyword information was

saved in the order they have been set up in the hierarchy it would be much

simpler for them to understand. I hope that explains.

Notwithstanding, I thank you for your contribution.

Regards, Ed

[cz35895897]

Ed, I couldn't help but chuckle while watching your video. Over the years we have found many issues with the Organizer, but this one was buried deep within its inner workings.

MichelBParis and I swapped many posts on the Organizer and how it handles Exif and IPTC data and unfortunately concluded that it is not meant to be any sort of Exif editor at all, its just a convenience feature. To batch edit, to comprehensively search, etc, you will need to use one of the widely available free Exif editing tools.

[Ed_on_Essentials]

Hi,

Thanks for your post.  I am pressing Adobe for a solid answer on what the logic is for how they save the IPTC data. It is tantalisingly close; an admission there is no sensible logic I hope will drive an argument to have the order per the hierarchy which will actually make it usable. Who knows, can only ask

[227Creek]

At a recent photo club meeting the whole subject was: "The IPTC Mess".  The issue is much larger than just the lack of cat-subcat-file organization.  Many of us have 10's of thousands of photos, have used a dozen or more programs over the years and frequently have pictures of one person, place or thing with 5 or 6 diffrent assigned keywords.  There is no one good, clear, flexible user interface for retrieving, manipulating and rewriting IPTC keywords in a systematic manner, particularly in large batches.  At least, not in a reputable program we do not suspect of harboring malware.