Click the "Format" item (or the top line of the Tag window). It shows a full tag dump, not tied to the database.
Thanks. I saw that, but didn't appreciate what I was looking at.
It seems I'm not going to be able to use any tags created by ACDSee in MC.
Thanks to my magical powers of obsession, I've resolved this. While I cannot recommend this to the sane, similarly-afflicted users may want to know how:
- In ACDSee, batch set filename to an otherwise unused field. Append categories and keywords to filename.
- In MC, delete and re-add the files. If necessary, update name with "=filename()".
- In MC, use quick search to filter each unique category/keyword, and tag as appropriate using Pane Tagging.
- In ACDSee, rename the files back to the original name.
- In MC, delete and re-add the files. If necessary, update name with "=filename()".
At first, I found it nerve-wracking to delete files and hope that they could be re-added without loss of tagging information. After a few times, however, I began to appreciate how remarkably robust MC is in keeping track of files whose name has changed or have been moved. At first, this was frustrating (if not terrifying) because it seemed MC was refusing to forget about the old files, and start fresh with the new. Now I'm not sure if that is because I was not immediately refreshing the information with
update library (with tags), and perhaps slow to discover
=filename(). So a question lingers... Is there a way to remove all information in the database for deleted files, so it can "start fresh" when the same files are re-added?
If there are specific fields you would like supported...
The best I can do with ACDSee is write its category and keyword data to the EXIF
User Comment field. I believe the proper name is
Exif.Photo.UserComment (tag #37510). It would be wonderful if I could access this from MC. I would probably still have to redo the tagging manually, but it would still be a huge time-saver.
It would also be nice if MC's
places and
people could be written to tags (perhaps IPTC
sublocation and
object name) so they would be accessible by other software. I do understand, however, writing data to tags is a much more complicated matter—conflicts with existing data, etc.
When I use {=tag(exif: Date)} on a geo-tagged image, it returns nothing...
I never did figure out what the problem was with images tagged with RoboGEO. Most dates seemed to be fixed by my re-tagging process, but for a few hundred of them I just had to enter the correct (i.e., shooting date) manually. I had no such problem with images not yet geo-tagged, and geo-tagging those images after they were in MC didn't seem to introduce any problems.
One remaining question... I notice latitude and longitude appear in the (detailed format section of the) tag pane as degrees without decimals or minutes/seconds. I presume this is just for the sake of brevity in the display, and not an indication MC is unable to read the information correctly?
Thanks very much for your help. I'm very impressed with MC's tagging system. It's at least on par with that of ACDSee—a program largely based the need for photo organization. I need to stick with ACDSee for it's editing and photo-specific organizing features, so I hope there will be more efficient ways for me to integrate the two.