Using PL8 with xmp sidecars

DxO PhotoLab macOS topics
1

In Capture One I have written colour/rating tags. Capture One has “Prefer xmp” enabled. The xmp files have the following lines written to them:

xmp:Rating5</xmp:Rating>
xmp:LabelGreen</xmp:Label>

In PL8, Settings > Metadata has “Syncronise …” ticked. Also, the root images folder has been indexed.

PL8 is not displaying the two settings.

In PL8, if I choose an image whose xmp shows green/5*, then change it to yellow/3*, then close PL8 … the xmp timestamp reflects the closure time of PL8 but the colour/rating lines remain at green/5.

From what I’ve read on this forum this should work – so I’m doing something wrong. Any ideas please?

Clive

[Edit] Sorry, I don’t know how to stop this forum software from changing the opening xmp tag to blue.

2

Are you explicitly writing the metadata to the xmps after changing them?

3

Have you activated the writing of XMP in the PL8 settings ?

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4

I’ve misled you in my confusion. I have a high ISO RAW, I ‘open with’ in CO and send it to DxO for geometry, lens and noise then export as dng to original folder.

  1. The change in DxO from green5 to yellow3 is made – I was looking in the dng xmp but I had changed the original RAW xmp. In this situaltion, the RAW xmp would ordinarily have no colour/rating data, just the dng xmp.
  2. The bit about PL8 not reading the xmp colour/rating written by CO is correct. Apart from the yellow3 check I set in PL8, none of the images show any colour or rating.

Apologies for the confusion/mis-direction.

Clive

5

Update:

PL8 will read xmps from RAW but not from DNG. As it happens, in the folder I was testing, the only files containing colour/rating were all dng. When I go to a folder where RAW have been directly processed and tagged, the tagging that is written by CO to the xmp is shown correctly in PL8. And buried on P128 of the pdf manual I have is reference to RAW/xmp and DNG/headers. So … when I exported the DNG from PL8 I did not include tagging. When I processed in CO I also tagged and that tagging was correctly written to the xmp (but I have no way of knowing if it was also written to the dng header). When I got back to PL8 it clearly is not reading the dng xmp (and it might be reading the dng header but I don’t know if CO has written the header).

Oh bother!!

Clive

[Edit]

I exported a new RAW file from PL8 as a dng to original folder.

I entered a colour and rating in CO and closed the application.

I noted that a new xmp had been created and it contained both tags.

I deleted the xmp.

I opened the containing folder in XNViewMP (which has an exiftool tab and claims to read dng headers) and noted that the subject image did not show tags.

I used MacOS to ‘put back’ the xmp.

I went back into XNViewMP and forced a read of the files and noted that the tagging information appeared.

So I conclude that CO is not writing data to dng headers and PL8 is not reading dng xmp files.

[Edit 2]

Having deleted the xmp file … I go into PL8 and assign tags to the previously exported dng. PL8 does not create a new xmp file but does create a new dop file.

6

To be really sure that xmp is read or written to, it’s best to use the respective menu items from PL’s menu.

The synchronise setting usually worked when I tested it a while ago, but I keep sync off for both metadata and settings.

7

As a side note, this definitely has to be done if you rename a keyword in the Keywords List. I learned that PL will not automatically update the sidecars when doing this, and you have to search for that keyword, select all photos, and then perform the File > Metadata > Write to image action.

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