EXIF->Profile Button

[David Blauer]

EXIF->Profile Button is suddenly greyed out. It used to work, but I don't remember what I must've done but now it's no longer functional.

I'm using the Pro Plug-In 2.61 in Photoshop CS.

Oh-could that be it? I installed CS last week. Hmmmm...

[NITeam]

In principle, the button is only active when the plug-in host (PS) is capable of providing EXIF data to the plug-in and in principle there is some EXIF data. It may be that CS is not capable anymore of providing EXIF to the plug-ins (bug) or there is no EXIF in the image you process (check this using PS own EXIF viewer).

Vlad

[David Blauer]

There definitely is EXIF in CS. Selecting "info" from the CS menu gives a very complete EXIF listing. These are files converted from RAW in CS. Still the EXIF->Info button in NI is greyed out.

[NITeam]

There may be something with PS capability of providing EXIF to plug-ins then. PS7 was able to do so, CS seems to have trouble with this. We will check this issue in more details but the preliminary conclusion is quite obvious.

Vlad

[NITeam]

Could you send me a sample image that produces this effect. I cannot reproduce it.

Thank you,
Vlad

[Guest]

CS has changed the way it handles EXIF information and other metadata - there already is a thread at the ADOBE user-to-user forum with many complaints (mine included) about CS suddenly and unexpectedly switching their metadata handling convention to XMP on everyone...even if it is "new and improved"

The following is a copy'n paste of Thomas Knoll's reply on that thread:

The EXIF information is there, it is just encoded as XMP rather than the old-style EXIF TIFF tags. Photoshop CS and other recent Adobe applications see this EXIF data just fine. We expect third party image database utilities will be updated to support XMP based metadata, at which time they will start seeing the EXIF information inside the XMP data.

However, it may take some time until all third party software is updated to support XMP.

To help users during this transition time until XMP is more widely supported, the first "new camera support" update to Adobe Camera Raw 2.0 will be modified to mirror the EXIF information to both the old EXIF tags and the new XMP structures.

The schedule for this Camera Raw update release has not been announced yet, but my guess is sometime early next year.

Thomas Knoll

So there you go, Neatimage should have anticipated this and prepared for XMP awareness. Didn't Adobe phone you to give you a heads up?

Just kidding, of course

[NITeam]

Thanks for the information. Looks interesting!

We will check this at Adobe webpages. Hopefully the compatibility with the standard EXIF (kept in TIFF dir) will be preserved in PS unless they are going to introduce a better standard.

Vlad

[royfel]

To further narrow it down: on a Nikon D2h NEF processed in Nikon Capture saved as jpeg opened in PSCS, Exif will work on stand alone and plug in. Same file processed in ACR CS Exif will not work (which of course screws the auto- pick profile thingy).
If you are going to redo this part : in the info window I get exposure time, white balance, and exposure comp. What I need is ISO and format(NEF or JPEG).
Thanks so much for a free upgrade (3.0) really speeds up my day.
Roy Feldman

[janc]

I have the same problem using the 3.0 plugin with PaintShop Pro 8.1. The EXIF information is there and everything works as expected witn NI stand-alone but EXIF is not present in the plugin.

/ Regards
/ Jan Carlsson

[NITeam]

It is a problem of PaintShop. It does not provide the EXIF information of the image to plug-ins in the standard way.

We will look into other ways of obtaining this information from PaintShop, but generally this is a problem of the editor.

Vlad

[neatfreak]

Thanks for the information. Looks interesting!

We will check this at Adobe webpages. Hopefully the compatibility with the standard EXIF (kept in TIFF dir) will be preserved in PS unless they are going to introduce a better standard.

Vlad

Any progress on this? Looks like Adobe is determined to do away with EXIF in favor of XMP, and from what I know about them they are about as easy to torn around as a speeding train in the middle of a tunnel. BreezeBrowser got XMP support in the latest version, and there are some tools for handling XMP (http://www.w3.org/People/Bos/JPEG-XMP/ for example), so the standard at least appears to be open.
Missing EXIF and inability to match the best profile because of it, are hugely inconvenient in a workflow involving NeatImage.

[NITeam]

As far as I know, Adobe promised to re-introduce EXIF support in the nearest update (in January, if I am not mistaken) of their image editors. They will support both versions of EXIF block representation.

On our side, we have included the XMP in our plans. I am not giving any specific date yet but we certainly want to be compatible with Photoshop when they completely drop the current EXIF standard in favor of XMP.

Vlad