Rogue Keywords are added from IPTC Data

[smadell]

I am finding "rogue" keywords showing up in my photos. For the most part, this occurs after I Verify a folder or otherwise rebuild a folder's contents.

I have keywords for Places that include the city and state (within the US) and sometimes the actual location within a city. But they never include the keyword "United States", "USA", or anything similar. Because the vast majority of my photos have been (and will be) shot in the US, this is not information that I would find helpful.

I am finding that keywords are being added after a folder Verify operation, including the Country, State, and City, and sometimes an address. The only explanation I think I have is that these photos have data entered in the Location Created section of the IPTC Extension portion of the Details panel.

I am at a complete loss as to how to remove this information so that the Country/State/City/Address keywords do not keep re-appearing. There are too many of these images to go through one by one. Certainly there must be a way to delete this information, but I don't know what it is.

Anyone (Hert?) who can offer help – a script, a command, anything! – would be appreciated.

[G8DHE]

Maybe there appearing from the Geo Tag operations ? The fields are typical of the fields that would appear after a Lat/Long from GPS etc. are used to Geo Locate an image.

[smadell]

Any geotagging I do is done from .gpx files, and I don’t ever geotag using the geolocate lookups.

However, irrespective of how they got there the IPTC data seems to be causing extra (unwanted) keywords to get created and applied. What I want to know is either (i) how do I delete data from IPTC fields that seem to originate with the file itself; or (ii) if I can’t get rid of the IPTC data, how to I keep that data from being used to create keywords within the “Place” category?

[G8DHE]

OK, well select the Details pane, choose to display IPTC data (top right menu choice). Select some images to test, then create a profile to clear the relevant fields, save and test. If all is correct then apply the profile to all the images you want to clear the IPTC data for.

[noramila]

Looks like the IPTC data is adding unwanted keywords. You can try using a tool like ExifTool to remove or edit the IPTC fields for many files at once. This will save you time instead of clearing them one by one.

[Hert]

In Sync Read Settings, disable the GEO Location processing if you don't want catalog labels for Places.

[smadell]

G8DHE - I tried to delete IPTC data inside of PS, but never got this to work. I suspect (but can’t say for certain) that this only affects the metadata that PS writes to the catalog, but not the data embedded in the original files themselves. Thus, trying to clear an IPTC field works for the briefest of moments, but the data is immediately reestablished because (I think) the IPTC data in the file itself is still there.

noramila - good suggestion, I suppose, but ExifTool is just a bit too nerdy for this old man. Command line stuff that alters the image files just makes me nervous, and I’d be playing with fire and way out of my comfort zone.

Hert’s suggestion, on the other hand, seems to be spot on. Quite frankly, I don’t care if the IPTC data is still there. I just want it to leave my keywords alone. Since my geotagging is either from .gpx files or sometimes added by way of Lat/Long info included with keywords, I don’t need to add location data by other means, such as a reverse lookup from IPTC. As far as I can tell, simply changing the GeoLocation sync to “None” in the Settings has worked really well. The IPTC location data is still there, and I can see it in the Details tab, but it doesn’t add any keywords when processing. I’m a happy guy.

[G8DHE]

Its possible that if the same data is used in multiple fields then deleting it from just the IPTC fields alone won't delete it from the other Geo Location and hence when this gets re-written it copies it back into the IPTC data fields again from other areas that use the same data. Its not something I need to do on a regular basis as I try to ensure that all Geo Location data is present on mine .... hang on lets try ..... yes deleting it from just the IPTC core fields alone is sufficient, it needs to be deleted from the Geo Location fields as well then it doesn't reappear. I've had this sort of thing happen before and its a case of finding all identical data fields and deleting/replacing them all at the same time.

Its probably summed up in this cartoon! https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png

standards.png (23.74 KiB) Viewed 5342 times