Writing metadata to jpgs?

[jccrtv]

I want to embed keywords in the jpg's themselves so in the future I don't have to worry about importing sidecar files or catalogs (in future software). I've tried SYNC inside of iView, but then the keywords don't appear when I check by importing those jpgs into iPhoto. I'm working thru the book so please forgive if this is a dumb question.

[peterkrogh]

Does the version of iPhoto read keywords written by other applications?  You might send a file to someone who has Photoshop and see if they can see the keyword.
Peter

[jccrtv]

Hi Peter, Thanks for the site and the excellent book. It has really made me look at what I'm doing more closely, made me buy some new drives, and filled me with some questions about how to keyword the gaint backlog catalog of jpgs. Unless I missed it, the book only discusses keywording RAW. Maybe the process to keyword jpgs is so easy I'm overthinking. So my task is to keyword my back catalog of jpgs now that my NEFs are done. I have Bridge, iView, Aperture, Lightroom beta and iPhoto5 (with iPhoto6 coming in a few days). I want to put the keywords right into the metadata so I don't have to worry about sidecar files and catalogs getting corrupted. If the keywords are in the jpg metadata and a future preferred program comes along I could just import all the files and have it read the embedded keywords.

1) Is my thinking wrong doing it this way, putting it right in the file?

2) I'm new to Keywording having never seen the need till I got the DAM book. Since the DAM book mentions that different programs save keywords differently I wanted to find ONE program to embed keywords that would make them most readable by future software. My findings are with JPGS: That Bridge and iView both embed keywords in the metadata and can be read in either program. Iphoto5 can NOT read embedded keywords from Bridge and iView. And Bridge and IView don't read keywords from an exported iPhoto5 file. So Bridge and iView are the safe ones to do the job? Again, do I have any of this wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Jim

[peterkrogh]

Jim,
You have it basically right.  Keywording with JPEGs is much easier, since you don't have the sidecar file issue.  I am guessing that iPhoto uses keywords only in its database, and does not embed them, nor does it read them out robustly.  I'd stick with iView and Bridge.
Peter

[jccrtv]

Thanks very much Peter. Must feel good that so many of us love the book. Cheers from New York.

[peterkrogh]

Yes it does.  It's been very rewarding (personally, if not yet financially)
Peter