Hi,

I already posted this issue to support a couple of weeks ago, but got no reply so far:

I have a problem that IPTC information edited in iMatch 3.4.0.34 is not visible under Picasa 2.5. It works quite fine vice versa - information entered in Picasa can be imported to iMatch.

I did some research around that issue and found out, that also other tools like Opanda IExif 2.6 can not see the IPTC data entered in iMatch while other tools like Irfan View can see the data with no problem.

I figured out that the only way to force the data I entered in iMatch IPTC editor to become visible and searchable under Picasa was to open each image under IrfanView, open its IPTC dialog and click Write to refresh the IPTC information using IrfanView (without any additional editing), having Picasa running in the background, it immediately senses the change and the IPTC fields (caption and keywords) become available in Picasa.

Would the upgrade to iMatch 3.5 solve the issue? What can I do to force iMatch to become more Picasa-friendly?

Thank you in advance for any hints.
Jaroslav

Hi Jaroslav,

Welcome to the IMatch user forum.

I edited your post to remove the actual email address for Support. Mario gets a ton of spam and posting the address might add to it.

I can't answer your question but hopefully someone who uses Picasa 2.5 will reply.

@Richard: Thanks for removing my email address.
I generally do not post email addresses here and do not encourage other users to post their emails. Bots and other spiders extract emails from public forums and then flood your Inbox with SPAM.


I recall a similar problem in Picasa with standard IPTC added by IMatch or other tools. Perhaps this is more a problem in Picasa and not IMatch?

IMatch is used in the daily workflow of photographers, stock agencies and other heavy users. Most of them use a workflow based on IPTC, and a problem in this area would immediately bubble up and cause tons of posts here on the forum and emails in my Inbox. I always test that the ITPC data written by IMatch is compatible with the major applications, workflow systems and databases.

Nothing major has been changed to the IPTC so I cannot tell if it is "Picasa friendly".

I hence created a small JPEG file, added IPTC to it in IMatch 3.5.0.22 and tested it with IrfanView, Exifer, ExifTools, Photoshop and Bridge. All applications were able to see the IPTC data in this image.

I have attached the image to this post. If Picasa cannot see the IPTC data, this is definitely a bug in Picasa, not IMatch.

Please be so kind and test this image on your machine.

I tried the attached picture in Picasa and it has problems retrieving the IPTC info correctly indeed. I agree that most likely the issue is in Picasa, but from my perspective, it really does not matter.
My aim has been to use iMatch as a primary database & meta data editor - which it is very efficient for - and use Picasa for browsing, presentation and general keyword-based searching - the user interface of Picasa is IMHO more streamlined and its Google-like search feature, which is very simple to use but very powerful , is great for the most typical cases.
Due to the bug in loading the IPTC data entered in iMatch to Picasa, I have to enter all the data in Picasa (because the way from Picasa -> iMatch works fine).
If you are interested in more of a GAP analysis of iMatch, I can provide more details on that subject. IMatch would be perfect, if it had become a bit like Picasa in certain aspects.

Regards
Jaroslav

Hi,

the IPTC data in this image shows fine in Photoshop, Bridge, IMatch, Exifer, ExifTool, IPTCView and a variety of other tools and application I have tried.

If Picasa is the only application which cannot read the information, I think the problem is really in Picasa. Have you asked Google for more information about why Picasa does not read the information? I cannot look into Picasa to find out what it does expect.

Hi,

I have the same problems, but I think that there is however a point with imatch because the iptc captions from any other software (irfanview) are well displayed in picasa, but not iptc captions modified or created with imatch. But that's true that picasa is the only one unable to read iptc field from imatch.
It seems that picasa is not able to recognize the iptc field created by imatch, and if I try to enter a new description in picasa, for an image that has already one from imatch, then the picasa description is not written in the iptc field and may be lost.
Thank you for any help.

Why picasa would be useful in combination with imatch: imatch is very powerful but difficult to use for the "common users", picasa has less power, but is so easy. I want to manage my picture with imatch and watch them (and my familly as well) with picasa.

Thank you for any help.

It would help if Google would tell you what exactly is different in Picasa, and what I should change in IMatch to make it happy.

Photoshop and FotoStation are by far the most picky applications I know. And both handle the IPTC data written by IMatch.

Here is a hint I found doing some research on the subject at

http://libiptcdata.sourceforge.net/docs/libiptcdata-data.html

iptc_data_set_encoding_utf8 ()

int iptc_data_set_encoding_utf8 (IptcData *data);

Sets the contents of the "character set" dataset (1:90) to contain the control sequence that indicates UTF-8 as the character encoding for any character-based datasets in record 2 or higher. If dataset 1:90 is not present, it will be added to the collection. Any prior value of dataset 1:90 will be overwritten by this function. Note that some third-party applications (notably Picasa) will ignore all your IPTC data if this option is set.

Interesting.

chris

I'm not sure what you want to tell me with this.

By default, IPTC data was all 8-bit ASCII. Over time, some applications wanted to add non-ASCII data to IPTC, which causes the IPTC committee to come up with the UTF encoding and the 1:90 field.

Of course not all applications which support IPTC support UTF-encoded contents, or even maintain UT8-encoded contents. This also includes older versions of standard software.

IMatch detects the contents of the 1:90 field inside the IPTC record, and correctly maintains UTF-8 encoded data. If the IPTC data in the image is UTF-8 encoded, IMatch will also write it as UTF-8 again. IMatch translates the user input in the editor using the current code page and the encoding of the IPTC record.

What I'm trying to tell you is that Picasa doesn't see any of the IPTC values which iMatch writes in jpg's. The documentation which I quoted seems to address that Picasa is peculiar in the way that it reads IPTC data. Using the Microsoft Photo Info Tool, if I add a value to the keywords then Picasa can see the IPTC data.

I'm currently having to use this workaround so that Picas can see the keywords I'm applying to some shots I took for work.