Exports Don't Include IPTC/Copyright Info

Are you checking the Include metadata box when you export?

Before importing the JPG's into Aperture open them in Preview and see if the IPTC data is there.

Also open the Aperture exported JPGs in Preview and see what that shows.

Message was edited by: Frank Caggiano

Ah so you are adding the data during the import into Aperture in the Import Pane. How are you doing the import? Is this the same for both types of imports, RAWs directly into Aperture and JPGs from DXO?

That's odd as I add copyright info on import to all my images, RAW, JPG, TIFF and the data appears for all of them on export. How are you looking for the data on the exported images?

I am also seeing this behavior, and here's what I've discovered with some testing:

Import a JPG file which doesn't contain any IPTC info.

Add Copyright & Creator fields within Aperture, either at import or afterwords.

Export the image as JPG.

View the exported image in Preview. The Copyright & Creator fields are apparently missing when you look at the file info.

So far, this confirms what you have seen.

But...

If you view the file info in other applications, the data is actually present. For example:

- In PhotoMechanic the field's data is present. Further, if you change any metadata in PM and resave the image, then the "missing" metadata now shows up in Preview.

- In Photoshop, the fields contain blanks, but apparently an incorrect number of blanks. So PS is a bit confused, obviously. And like PM, if you resave the image from Photoshop then the IPTC data shows up properly in Preview.

- Another viewer-only application show the fields correctly.

Via testing, I only see this anomaly with my Nikon D3; other camera's JPG images do not exhibit the "missing" data in Preview after export. As you observed, RAW files are not affected.

Conclusion:

- Aperture screws up certain metadata when exporting original JPG images, but only if you view the metadata in Preview, and then only for specific cameras.

- The data is actually present, but some software can't see it properly.

Please pass along any findings if you can confirm what I've discovered. Since Aperture and Preview are both Apple applications, one would think they could get on the same page. Let's hope.

Edit: Added note about saving from PS.

I have the same issues, with a Canon S95.

Import RAWs from the camera, add a description, export to JPEG - works, i.e. description is displayed by Preview.

Import JPEGs from the camera, add a description, export to JPEG - the description field is blank in Preview. However the metadata is actually in the exported JPEG, checking with exiftool shows it's there. I recently upgraded to Aperture 3.4.1 and Mountain Lion 10.8.2. The problem was not present with Snow Leopard and Aperture 3.2.

Does anyone have a fix for this ?

--hm

Here is more information on the metadata export issues with Apterture 3.4.1. The problem seems to be specific to camera models. For example:

Olympus E-620:

- import RAW files from the camera into Aperture

- enter some text into the "Caption" field

- export to JPEG

- The JPEG file has "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" in the description (caption) field, regardless what was entered in Aperture

This is really, really bad. Aperture is effectively unusable if you want to add a caption to exported JPEGs, something very basic.

--hm

I believe the Olympus caption problem is a separate issue. Do a search for "Olympus caption" to see what I mean. Regarding this topic, the metadata is actually there but can't be seen by preview. That indicates the data could be incorrectly placed, or a pointer is screwed up, or something like that.

In case of RAW files from the Olympus E-620 Aperture definitely does not export captions correctly to JPEGs. I checked the JPEGs created by Aperture with "exiftool" (see www.exiftool.com). Here is an excerpt of what's in the JPEGs:

......

Creator Tool : Aperture 3.4.1

Rating : 1

Date Created : 2012:07:30 19:36:39

Description : OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

.....

Normally, what's entered into the "Caption" field in Aperture gets written to JPEGs with the "Description" keyword. I did not enter "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA" into the caption field, this text was inserted by Aperture during export.

This bug is new to me. I recently upgraded to OSX 10.8.x and Aperture 3.4.x. I had no issues before upgrading with OSX 10.6.x and Aperture 3.2.x.

Regards,

--hm

I had jpg (not raw) images in Aperture from both a Nikon D5100 and a Nikon AW100. I added captions to the images and then exported them as jpegs. The D5100 jpgs show the caption under Preview, the AW100 jpg do not.

I found a work-around using the free program exiftool (google it) and Terminal.

In terminal I changed to the folder which contained my AW100 images and then entered this command to re-write all the IPTC data.

exiftool -iptc:all= -tagsfromfile @ -all:all -unsafe ./

Thanks for the solution. I had a problem with a new Canon SX260 camera where photos exported from Aperture with captions imported back in with 31 blank characters in the caption field in Aperture (and iPhoto and Preview). Running the exiftool command you suggested fixed the problem and all the photos import now with their captions with no need to re-enter the captions.