PSP X6 crashes on hierachical IPTC keywords

[Trilliana]

Hi,

I already had a thread about PSP X6 crashing ( http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=51690 ), but what I finally found now deserves a new thread, because it has nothing to do with MSVCR90.DLL, but with PSP handling the keywords, as it seems now after tests.

PSP was crashing when opened in a certain folder, so I renamed the folder, created a new one, and copied the images from the old renamed one 2-4 pieces at a time. I then opened PSP on the new folder after each copy, and all went well until the last 2 copied images. I then deleted them, copied again each of the 2 images separatly, and found the culprit. It was the only image in that folder being tagged with hierarchical IPTC keywords. Moved the image from the folder, copied others into, and all went well again.

Navigated to another folder with older pictures, all tagged hierarchical, and PSP crashed again.

What is worst: Even after deleting the hierarchical keywords from that image, and renaming it didn't help. As soon as PSP founds that image it crashes.

Taking a look into the database: Indeed there is no structure for hierarchical keywords. And this is for me almost a real catastrophy! Both Lightroom 4 and Xnview can handle hierarchical keywords, which are very useful. Because I'm working with these software as much as with PSP, I started to tag my pictures accordingly, about 1200 of them until now, which took hours and hours. Xnview can even nicely create nested categories from the keywords, so it's one click to find all pictures with a given word.

So please, PLEASE Corel, do something about it! Taking a very deep breath and telling myself 100 times "take it easy" I could start now retagging my pictures, but who knows if PSP won't still crash, because some time somehow there were hierarchical keywords in those pictures!
Besides, hierarchical keywords are getting used more and more, specially by professionals, not handling them is a serious deficit.

[MarkZ]

I use/enter hierarchical keyword in AfterShop (ASP) Pro and files from that program open without problem in PSP, although as you point out PSP does not have provision for that type of keyword. Under tags it shows all the members of the hierarchy. ASP stores the keywords (and all other editing information) in external XMP files; so does Lightroom, so my guess is that it is the format used by Xnview that is causing the problem. Because of the XMP files I would expect that hierarchical keywords entered in Lightroom should display in PSP.

I found this article interesting - http://www.dpbestflow.org/metadata/keywording.

[LeviFiction]

PSPX6 has a maximum string value of 255 characters in some EXIF fields. Anything longer will crash PSP. It wouldn't surprise me if they didn't have issues with certain types of meta data. Whether the format or the length, something is wrong.

The big issue there, is how are they not checking the values and just trying to cram them into variables?

If they didn't support certain values or formats it shouldn't bring down the whole program if properly evaluated. If their engine were not their own it might make more sense as something they can't directly control. And obviously I don't know where in the program the issue is. But it just seems so, off.

[Trilliana]

The big issue there, is how are they not checking the values and just trying to cram them into variables?

If they didn't support certain values or formats it shouldn't bring down the whole program if properly evaluated. If their engine were not their own it might make more sense as something they can't directly control. And obviously I don't know where in the program the issue is. But it just seems so, off.

Yes, I guess that's the problem. I am myself software developer (database applications, VBA), and I know one always has to check (and sometimes double check) incoming data. If it doesn't fit, just forget it, I wouldn't mind just seeing no tags (or only the first/last one from the hierarchy) in PSP instead of crash.

@MarkZ: About XMP data: In both programs you have the option to either create sidecar XMP or embed it in the picture, and because I don't like 1001 supplemental files to be carried around, I choose the embedding. So there's no danger in loosing the metadata. OTOH your guess is right about XnView, I do tag the pictures with it filling part of the IPTC fields. LR has no problem with it.

Another question would be which data is read by PSP, the XMP or the IPTC fields. MarkZ, do you also have IPTC or only the sidecar XMP?

[MarkZ]

Trilliana:

I'm not sure I can answer your questions but will do my best. Corel's ASP was developed from Bibble; in their implementation they handled XMP files differently than Adobe, perhaps in the naming convention mainly. A RAW file such as IMGB3291.PEF has an associated file IMGB3291.PEF.XMP created when the original is edited. In this program there are no options about the XMP file. One of the features I like about the XMP files is no matter the number of versions created there is only one, small XMP file. Keywords, rating, etc. are contained in the XMP file.

When ASP is used to create a JPG, the EXIF/IPTC fields contain data from both the original IPTC and from the XMP file, so that keywords from the XMP are copied into the IPTC in the JPG. I've compared the data in the RAW, XMP and JPG files using an EXIF viewer and find only a small portion of the data is copied and it is inconsistent. For example, the keywords are copied but not the rating (which we have complained about).

I hope this answers your questions.

[Trilliana]

Further tests:

If the keywords are stored only in XMP format (either embedded or in sidecar XMP file) and not as IPTC data, PSP doesn't crash. Probably because XMP stores the actual keywords from the lowest hierarchy level as such in one section called dc, and the hierarchy structure with the upper levels in another section called lr, as I can see now. I guess PSP ignores the latter.

And BTW, X4 does not crash on the same image files! It simply lists the lowest level keywords, and that's it. I'd like to know, why the developers had to change that?

I knew I should wait for a SP1, but X6 has new features I really like