@nwboater Yes I had guessed as much! You are a little older than me, about 6 years! I feel that there is a big learning curve with IMatch although there are a number of users of that product on the forum @jch2103 for one who may be able to help.
@jch2103 has been fairly vocal on the forum with respect to PL5 “playing” with the keyword format output from IMatch and would also welcome a source image protection facility, I suspect. However, the latest release of PL5.2.0 has made changes which might be more acceptable to users who have complained. The complaint is as much about what happens with the exported JPGs (or TIFFs or DNG files) as it is about PL5 damaging the source metadata!
I was going to post the following XMP-files gets F*cked up due hierachical mismanagement in dual management - #39 by BHAYT here since it closely related but finally added it to the the post indicated which helps identify the changes that have been made.
I purchased IMatch when it was on offer at Christmas and it is a very well featured product but with a steep learning curve for someone who has not used a full blown DAM before, i.e. me!
If you can send me your normal Photo Supreme preferences/settings and the types of keywords and other metadata that you use I can try to configure Photo Supreme to replicate the outputs that you expect to get.
Once we have a baseline I can then attempt to reproduce those in IMatch and also subject both to PL5 to see what might be happening with any and all of the data that you use!
In the meantime I would welcome some advice with respect to Photo Supreme. I want to be able to add animal|mammal|bear for example without PS adding ‘Miscellaneous’ (a category I believe) to the keyword! What setting stops the automatic assignment of a category so that I get the keyword I entered with no additions?