ACDSee Metadata Presets

[Phil]

Hi

I am adding some metadata to photos in ACDSee 2022 Ultimate and am using the ACDSee Metadata to input the DTG the photo was taken as the ACDSee database date.
I wish move the ACDSee Metadata to Exif so when I transfer the pictures to my iphone, the metadata can be transferred and recognised in the phone photos app. I do this with a metadata preset. This works well, with the description and location data moving across fine.

2 issues however.

1 - I cannot seem to be able to transfer the database date to the DateCreated in Exif which is what Apple recognises as the metadata preset function doesn't seem to allow you to move date data.
2 - Face data cannot transfer either.

Does anyone have any ready workarounds?

Many thanks - Phil

[Greyfox]

Phil

ACDSee's metadata presets can copy information from EXIF metadata fields (tags) to IPTC, or to ACDSee metadata, but there is no provision for them to copy to EXIF.

When you say you have moved ACDSee's "description" and "location" data to EXIF using an ACDSee metadata preset, I suspect you may actually be copying ACDSee metadata to IPTC metadata, not EXIF metadata, but also neither "description" or "location" are proper ACDSee metadata field or tag names, so it isn't really clear what you are doing. Perhaps a screen shot of the metadata preset would help?.

Dates
Whilst some software chooses to vary what they call the individual EXIF tag names, in the EXIF standard (JEIDA 2.32) the date/time an image was originally generated is DateTimeOriginal (tag 9003H) and the date & time it was digitized is DateTimeDigitized (Tag 9004H). Thankfully ACDSee uses the standard names for these dates.

When a photo is taken by a digital camera these two timestamps will both (effectively) be the same, however DateTimeDigitized can also be used as the date/time an image was digitized by a scanner. Note that while ExifTool calls DateTimeOriginal by its "standard tag name" in ExifIFD, it refers to DateTimeDigitized as CreateDate.

There is a third EXIF tag DateTime (tag 132H) which in the standard is defined as the date and time the file was last changed. This one only shows in ACDSee EXIF listing when you have "All EXIF" selected. All three tags also have associated sub-second tags, and can also appear in Makers Notes..

Depending on the setting at Tools\Options\Database, ACDSee can automatically set its DatabaseDate to the EXIF Date (DateTimeOriginal), but if there is no EXIF metadata, the Database date will be left as "Click to assign a date", as will both ACDSee's EXIF DateTimeOriginal and DateTimeDigitized.

ACDSee's Database date is a database date only. There is no provision in ACDSee for it to overwrite the EXIF DateTimeOriginal. Both tags can however be manually edited.

Faces
ACDSee's faceID metadata is somewhat proprietary. There are no tags in the EXIF standard for Face metadata. ACDSee writes its FaceID metadata into Xmp metadata in an XMP-acdsee-rs section. Basically the metadata is the Face Name, and a number of offsets that define the area of the face. ExifTool is able to read that Face metadata, and if your Apple device isn't able to also read it there, I don't know any other area it could be copied to where it could read it, nor whether the Apple device could make any valid use of it..

[Phil]

Greyfox

Thank-you so much for your reply, really helpful. It always amazes me how complicated metadata can be!

You are right, it is the IPTC metadata I am copying to/from. This is the preset I use below. What I am trying to do is make as much of the metadata available across software platforms as I primarily use ACDSee as a DAM. When it comes to showing people pictures and sharing, it is through a mobile Apple Device.





You surmise correctly that is is scanned photos that I am wanting to add metadata to, appreciate your explanation of the dates. I've just adjusted the EXIF dates manually which was far faster than I thought by using a custom metadata view with just the dates showing, it was a fast copy/paste operation.

Fair enough with the face data, was as I expected but I can't die in a ditch over that one as that is an across platform limitation but useful background.

Thanks again - Phil

[George S]

Is the Face metadata written when embedding is done? Does only the faces I confirm get written or does all derived faces get written?

[Greyfox]

Is the Face metadata written when embedding is done? Does only the faces I confirm get written or does all derived faces get written?

You get to choose that in the embed metadata dialog.



The embed process can be either to selected images, or to all images, but will only embed to individual images if there is metadata that is new for those images (when the embed pending flag is set for the images).