Keywords shown in Nitro not seen in Photos

[Gary Small]

I exported Apple Pro Raw (iPhone 15pro) photos to Jpeg-XL from another software. THEN, I used Nitro to keyword all the photos. THEN, I imported those photos into Apple Photos. None of the keywords are apparently imported…so why not?

The obvious question COULD be why didn’t I export from Apple Pro Raw to Heic from Nitro…but I’d rather maintain the 16bit color and smaller files size that JXL provides than Heic and 8 or 10 bit color with LARGER file sizes.

Am I not understanding the Keyword issue between Nitro and Photos? Is Apple Photos refusing to read those Nitro XMP files? I love the keyboarding feature in Nitro, but I am not going to love having to duplicate the work in Photos if those keywords do not import.

Looking for advice…thanks…gary

[Nik Bhatt]

The main issue is that Photos does not read XMP sidecars. I plan to add JPEG-XL export support in the (relatively near) future, which would also embed the keywords into the file, at which point, Photos will be able to see the keywords. The other way for Nitro to solve this is to have Nitro write XMP directly into original files (in this case, the JPEG-XL that you made in the other app). However, that is a bit longer term, as writing into original files has risks that need to be managed carefully.

[Gary Small]

Thanks Nik. Photos not reading Xmp files says it all! I have previously had issues with software not reading Heic keywords written by software such as Photo Mechanic. As I understand it, HEIF has some proprietary issues which some software either avoids or doesn’t fully support. Jpeg-XL would seem to solve some off that as “open source” with even better compression and support for 16bit color. I HAVE noticed however, that the increased compression can result in longer rendering time.

gary

[Nik Bhatt]

JPEG-XL is much slower to encode / decode right now. I don’t think there is hardware support for it, unlike HEIC and JPEG which do.

[Gary Small]

Hi Nik,

Follow up issue with keyword compatibility. In Files Mode, I added keywords to 10 Apple Pro Raw (DNG) files (as a test). XMP files were created, but none of my other software (DxO PL, xnView, ON1, Photo Supreme) read them. conversely, keywords written by Photo Supreme in “xmp” are not read by Nitro.

Perhaps I am doing something wrong. I have a rather large catalog (approx 50k) photos in Photo Mechanic and more recently in Photo Supreme. I am somewhat keen on starting my workflow with Nitro for initial demosaicing, editing and keywording…but need to be able to retain the keyword efforts in my other cataloging software.

Is this possible, or do I need to rethink the process?

Also, if I WERE to rely on Nitro as my primary DAM…is there a limit to number of files managed? The ideal scenario (I thinK) would be to manage the raw files in Nitro Files mode and the exported Heic files in Apple Photos library…all from within Nitro.

thanks

gary

[Gary Small]

Further follow-up…..So this has been a bit like “herding cats”. what I THINK has been the issue is that (only) Apple Pro Raw dngs have a conflict when other software writes keywords INSIDE the DNG and others write xml files, which may conflict with Nitro’s XMP files. It looks like I may have resolved the issue, but will continue to experiment….gary

[Nik Bhatt]

XMP files have an issue, which is that there is no established file extension or naming standard for anything for proprietary RAWs (e.g., ARW, NEF).

For those files, the XMP is the raw file name with .xmp. Simple. But JPEG, DNG, etc. don’t follow that rule. That’s because of R+J pairs. If you shoot ARW + JPEG, then there are two original files and one XMP. Adobe could have specified what to do there, but instead they decided to punt and write the metadata into the original files.

There is obvious risk to modifying original files, and some people are dead-set against modification just on principle (understandably).

Nitro’s current solution is to write XMP for JPEG, DNG, etc. using the format _extension.xmp, so for DSC1234.JPG, the XMP is DSC1234_jpg.xmp.

Unfortunately, no other app uses the convention, so the XMP files are not seen by those apps.

There are only two solutions: 1) use .xmp for those files (which won’t work for any R+J pairs), or 2) write into the original.

My plan is eventually to offer both but not be happy about it 🙂

[Nik Bhatt]

By the way, I checked to see if macOS and iOS have the ability to create JPEG-XL files and unfortunately, the answer is no. It’s not possible either in macOS Sequoia or even macOS Tahoe. Since I rely on Apple’s code to export files (and write metadata etc), that format will have to wait until they get around to adding support. Sorry.

[Gary Small]

Thanks Nik, that is a very helpful understanding that you provided.

gary

[Gary Small]

I think Heic compatibility outside of the Apple universe are too problematic to be useful when coming straight out of the camera or iPhone. I’ve read that Google dropped support for jpeg-xl maybe because rendering time issues over the compression… so JXL may be lost in the wilderness for a fair amount of time.

I think a workflow (developing AND keyboarding) using Nitro initially with export of Heic files into Photos library and moving the raw (or other original) files to a dedicated catalog (Photo Mechanic, Photo supreme, xnView) with keywords hopefully intact will work pretty well for me.

thanks

gary

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