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EXIF information disappeared! Any ideas?

Almost all of the EXIF information disappeared from some (not all) of my 5 star images. Only the camera, lens and exposure information vanished - it was all there at one time. The fields now appear blank.


All of the images that this happened to have a weird profile name: "kCGColorSpaceGenericHDR". I have no idea what this is from.


At the top of the inspector panel, it says "Unknown Canera" and "Unknown Lens". Yet, it recogizes that the image was shot in RAW and shows the focus points


All non-5-star images have all the EXIF data remaining.I've rebuilt the library to no avail. Any ideas?


The only change I've made recently is to add the complete NIK collection. It was shortly after this that the problem appeared, but may be completely unrelated.


Any ideas?


Running Aperture 3.2.3, Lion 10.7.3

17" MacBook Pro


Thanks for any help and advice!


Charlie MacPherson

Posted on Apr 28, 2012 5:56 AM

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Posted on Apr 28, 2012 6:37 AM

Have those images with missing EXIF been externally edited - with a plug-in or an external editor? Maybe when the new quasi master has been created, to be passed to the plug-in or editor- the EXIF was not copied to the new master?

17 replies

Apr 28, 2012 6:46 AM in response to léonie

Nope. That's not it. I've only just begun to play with NIK D-Fine (noise reduction) and have not tried the other NIK applications in their collection yet.


I went back and checked the one image I did NIK noise reduction on. It has all of the EXIF data intact.


I suspect that the NIK installation may not be related, but it's the only change I made around the time that the error showed up.


Thanks for your effort - I'm really baffled. And I really need that data too.


Charlie MacPherson

Apr 28, 2012 7:25 AM in response to Charlie MacPherson

Hello Charlie,

How do you inspect the EXIF - in Aperture in the Metadata tab of the Inspector panel?


It would be good to check the master image files directly, if they still carry the EXIF data. Could you navigate in the Finder to the master image files and open them in an image editor that can display EXIF? Like Preview, Photoshop CS5, or GraphicConverter? Preview will show the EXIF, IPTC, and TIFF tags, if you go to the "Tools" menu, "Show Information".


If your library is managed, you will find the master image files by ctrl-clicking the Aperture Library package, and selecting "Show Package Contents", then navigate to the "Masters" folder. This is organized by "date added".


Léonie

Apr 28, 2012 9:17 AM in response to léonie

Well, I dug in and found the Masters. And a BIG problem that might (or might not) be related.


At one point, I used an image in one of my blogs. It was a Roseate Spoonbill that I showed both before and after cropping. I saved one image called "Spoonbill before crop" - probably a year ago.


For some reason, every one of the 17,103 images in my library are all named "Spoonbill before crop" followed by a sequential number.


I cannot imagine how this happened.


I've done both a rebuild and a repair - multiple times. It seems that it's not going to work.


Am I now faced with manually re-naming over 17,000 images?


Charlie MacPherson

Apr 28, 2012 9:36 AM in response to Charlie MacPherson

User uploaded file


Hallo Charlie,

Try to rename your Master Image Files using "Metadata -> Batch Change".

If your version names are still o.k., you can copy the version names to the master image files by setting the "Apply to Master Files" option.


This renaming to "Spoonbill" might have happend during a batch change in the similar way, perhaps with a wrong filename preset.


OT: What does a"Roseate Spoonbill" look like? Ours all are white ...😝


Regards

Léonie

May 7, 2012 1:06 PM in response to Kirby Krieger

You can (barely) see a better outline of the bill in the reflection -

OT: Now I see it - I should have enlarged the image in the first place - just marvellous - each single waterdrop dripping from the beak a perfectly sharp glittering crystal.


then I would get to see more of our work!

😠 Oh no! I definitely typed "your" work. It is really annoying how often the system corrupts the posts by dropping or exchanging letters, and sometimes even complete words reappear, that should have been deleted - diligently proof-reading the post does not help at all, when the editor window in the browser does not reflect the state on the web server.

May 7, 2012 1:23 PM in response to Charlie MacPherson

I'm the OP and did eventually solve the problem. Sort of. I made it the subject of my weekly photo blog last week. You can read the solution here:


http://www.theamazingimage.com/blog/2012/4/28/a-near-digital-death-experience.ht ml


In short, the library was corrupted, most likely due to an "unauthorixed dismount" of the drive. I do recall a message appearing that said the drive had been ejected improperly - and I had not unplugged it.


Fortunately, I had three different backups. I was able to use one of them that I had not mirrored after the file became corrupt.


This was *terrifying* for a few minutes, while I contemplated the potential disaster. I really dodged the bullet.


Charlie MacPherson

www.TheAmazingImage.com

May 7, 2012 1:43 PM in response to léonie

I hear you -- my new magic glass seems to think it knows English better than I do. And the Discussions software -- as you know well -- has always been testy (I repeatedly copy to the clipboard posts I'm writing). I did know what you intended. My "ours" was in reference to the birds -- a somewhat clumsy shorthand for "the ones who nest within the geo-political bounds we currently agree are assigned to me and my geo-politically-fellow humans" 😉 .

EXIF information disappeared! Any ideas?

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