merge metadata from jpg to dng?

[Deb27]

I'm in the process of switching from Picasa to Lightroom.
My camera has been set to take both RAW and JPEG. In one folder I have both the RAW and JPEG files. When I import them into LR, I unchecked the option for "Treat JPEG files next to raw files as separate photos". Therefore LR shows the photos with the DNG and JPEG visually combined (i.e. it doesn't show the JPEG separately).

I have photos in which the JPEG has metadata such as caption or title. In the LR library window metadata panel, I do not see the metadata that I know is in the JPEG. In the panel, I can see that "Sidecar Files" is set to jpg. I would like to get the metadata from the JPEG merged(?) copied(?) to the associated DNG.

The caption information is stored in both of the following fields in the jpg
Xmp: Description
Iptc:Caption-Abstract

If this can't be done directly in LR, I could use exiftool to copy the data from a JPEG field into the DNG but I don't know which field in the DNG I should copy it into.

Thanks!

 

[rob211]

This plugin is great for doing just what you want, merging JPEG metadata to the RAWs: Syncomatic - Sync files with same name or time

 

[Deb27]

Thanks, that does look useful. But I've been working with exiftool (which is free) and I did figure out how to do it there with some help from the forum for syntax. The command line is:
exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.jpg -Caption-Abstract -Description -ImageDescription -IPTC:Keywords -XPSubject -ext DNG dir
(where dir is the directory in which the files reside or . for current directory)

Since you said it's a plugin, I guess that means that LR can't do this out of the box?

 

[rob211]

Thanks, that does look useful. But I've been working with exiftool (which is free) and I did figure out how to do it there with some help from the forum for syntax. The command line is:
exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.jpg -Caption-Abstract -Description -ImageDescription -IPTC:Keywords -XPSubject -ext DNG dir
(where dir is the directory in which the files reside or . for current directory)

Since you said it's a plugin, I guess that means that LR can't do this out of the box?

Correct. The plugin works within the box, so to speak. And you don't have to then read the metadata or synchronize as you would have to after using exiftool.

And here's another tip since you've got an exiftool command that works: many plugins rely on exiftool to do their work. John Beardsworth's Capture Time to Exif is set up to do that, but it is also used to run any exiftool command you want within Lr. Well worth buying if you use exiftool a bunch (and it is, as you've found, very helpful in filling in holes in Lr's capabilities).

And I'm curious, shouldn't that be XMPSubject? and did it result in a proper hierarchical keyword structure? I thought Lr used XMP:HierachicalSubject, but maybe exiftool is different usage; I've never tried writing hierarchies with it.