Another Vista 'oops'!!

Stustaff

Oh dear!

http://www.pocket-lint.co.uk/news/news.phtml/6607/7631/metadata-mistakes-with-vista.phtml


Metadata mistakes with Vista

Editing metadata through Photo Info may render the file unreadable in Photoshop

by Amber Maitland

12 February 2007 - Photographers be warned before jumping in with both feet to Microsoft Vista -- you might want to reconsider using its metadata editing tools for the time being.

The Photo Info tool is designed to make it easy for you to edit the metadata or your image without using a standalone application, but it seems that Microsoft has not worked out all the kinks in the system yet.

To start with, Microsoft has posted about the problem to its support site, saying that when you edit the software for the digital camera may no longer recognise the metadata that is added to the photo by the camera itself.

Rather disappointingly, Microsoft's "workaround" suggestion says not to use the Photo Acquisition Wizard to download photos to the hard disk, and don't use the photo editor.

A recent post on the company's photo blog flags up issues with Nikon proprietary RAW format as well.

It says that there have been reports that tagging the NEF files through Vista and Photo Info makes the files unreadable in applications include Photoshop, although they can still be opened in Nikon Capture.

Worrying.

claudermilk

Not surprising. How much difficulty do the imaging-focused developers have keeping up with all the RAW formats? Should we really expect MS to be any more successful on their first try? While I'm not switching to Vista in the forseeable future, if I were, I'd simply keep using my proven apps in the same workflow as before.

Forehead

I guess the Open RAW movement has stalled, huh?

claudermilk wrote:

Not surprising. How much difficulty do the imaging-focused developers have keeping up with all the RAW formats? Should we really expect MS to be any more successful on their first try? While I'm not switching to Vista in the forseeable future, if I were, I'd simply keep using my proven apps in the same workflow as before.

claudermilk

As far as I can see, yup pretty much. It's a shame, too since this is becoming a bigger and bigger mess as each new body is introduced. Like most of us, I really wish something like DNG could become a viable solution. With the manufacturers making life hard on everyone with re-inventing their formats all the time and refusing to document them, thus forcing developers to reverse engineer them making best guesses--or worse deliberatley encrypting stuff (shame on Nikon). I wonder when they are goingto figure out it's the hardware we are interested in, the file format can't be giving much away and really doesn't matter from one chip to another (really, can Nikon use a CR2 file to glean anyting useful out of Canon's chip architecture--as if they even care using a totally different technology).

gluwater

To me this is not a big deal, it is widely known not to change the exif of proprietary RAW files anyway because it can corrupt them regardless of which OS you are using. That is why PS uses xmp files to store that info, it does not touch the RAW file itself.