Why aren’t we rioting in the streets?

18 months ago I posted a blog complaining that Adobe Photoshop CS3, a tool used by all sides of the picture business, removed metadata such as captions, descriptions and key words from images processed in Photoshop. Which means almost every image.

fotoLibra member John Strain got in touch with us to complain that the latest version, Adobe Photoshop CS4, also strips metadata.

I have recently uploaded several pictures to fotoLibra but found that the metadata did not transfer from Photoshop CS4 to fotoLibra when using fotoLibra DND. This has happened on previous occasions in the odd instance but this time a whole batch had no metadata attached. There are ways around this, rather than having to type all the data in again in to each image window, by copying and pasting but for some reason CS4 does not seem to allow “file info” information to be copied, which is a bit of a bind. You used to be able to copy and paste the information from CS3 but not it seems in CS4. So when it happens now, I type in keywords in to the fotoLibra window for one image and then copy and paste from there if the other images can use the same keywords and delete or add words as necessary.

I wondered if you had come across this before. I don’t know if it is a CS4 problem that meta data is not transferring or a general one.

Well frankly we feel it’s a complaint that should be made to Adobe, as there’s nothing fotoLibra can do about it. So we told him so (nicely, I hope) and he went off to talk to Adobe.

He came back to say:

I have just had a word with Adobe technical support and they were able to help to a degree.

Apparently the metadata cut/copy and paste issue answer is that right clicking on words to cut or copy just doesn’t work. The agent said that metadata is dealt with by a different company from Adobe and the ability to right click on words has not been built in to CS4. He didn’t know why that was and thought it unlikely that it was something which would be addressed.

He pointed out however, that pressing Control + C followed by right click and paste does work. It is a strange anomaly.

In respect of metadata not transferring to fotoLibra I got much the same answer as you did. He said that Photoshop does not support the transferring of metadata to a third-party application. I told him that it sometimes works but usually doesn’t. He suggested that your “page” that might not have been fully updated for CS4. I told him that it was also an issue with CS3 and he suggested that you contact him about it as it may be something which needs to be addressed. I asked for a reference so that you could take it from there if you wish and they would know what it was about but he declined to open a “case” as he said it would be something which fotoLibra would have to raise with them direct. I didn’t get as far as mentioning that you had tried to do so before.

So it does seem to be a recognised problem which Adobe has so far not addressed. It will be helpful though when metadata has not transferred, to be able to copy the words from the file information in the picture and paste them into fotoLibra as I used to be able to do with CS3.

I hope that all this might prove useful to anyone else having similar problems.

I would love to discuss this with the gentleman from Adobe, but I have no way of contacting him. We know the past two releases of Photoshop strip out the phoographers’ metadata. They seem to know it too. Why aren’t they doing anything about it?

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC, the body that specifies metadata standards) has published a list of Software supporting IPTC photo metadata standards IIM and “IPTC Core” that very clearly omits Adobe CS3 and CS4. So it would appear to be a commercial decision of Adobe’s part not to support it.

Why aren’t we rioting in the streets?

Oh. I’ve just heard we are.