Geoff Coupe's Blog

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Microsoft & Flickr

It’s very nice to see that with the latest version of the Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta, I can now publish photos directly into Flickr. Excellent.
 
WLPG test 1 
 
Update 25 October 2007: Ah well, I spoke too soon. The Upload to Flickr facility in Windows Live Photo Gallery has a bug. The IPTC/XMP Description metadata field in image files is not preserved during the upload process. Instead, the contents get overwritten by the content of the Title metadata field.
 
Update 26 October 2007: I sent an email to the Microsoft Photography Blog, and I’ve had a reply back. It turns out that they do preserve the image metadata, but for some reason they map the XMP Title field to the Flickr Description.
 
Why on earth do they do that? It seems to me to be much more logical to map the XMP Dublin Core Description field into the Flickr Description field… That’s what Flickr’s own uploading tool, Flickr Uploadr does, after all. With WLPG, I end up with files on Flickr where the Flickr Description doesn’t actually correspond with the image metadata shown under Flickr’s "more properties". It makes no sense to me.
 
So now I have the situation where Microsoft’s own Photo Info plug-in correctly displays the Description field; all my other image tools correctly display XMP/IPTC information, but WLPG corrupts the Description field on Flickr because it marches to a different tune. I’ll continue to stick with Flickr Uploadr, thanks very much.
 
Update 27 October 2007: I’ve had a further email reply from a member of Microsoft’s Windows Live Photo Gallery team. He agrees with me that the mapping of the Title field into the Flickr Description field is a bug, and he has logged it as such. Hopefully, it will be corrected in a future version of WLPG.
 
Update 17 September 2008: The latest version of Windows Live Photo Gallery was released as a beta today, and wouldn’t you know it – that bug is still there… Here’s a photo uploaded to Flickr with the Flickr Uploadr tool. See how the description field says what it is supposed to say? And here’s the same photo uploaded with Windows Live Photo Gallery. See how the description field has been overwritten by the file title field? Gah…
 
Update 21 September 2008: I’ve described a further bug in Windows Live Photo Gallery that is a showstopper as far as I am concerned.
 
Update 17 December 2008: The version of WLPG released yesterday (build 14.0.8051.1204) has fixed the mapping bug. Hooray.

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5 responses to “Microsoft & Flickr”

  1. Windows Live Wave 3 | Geoff Coupe's Blog

    […] pleased to see that at least one bug in Windows Live Photo Gallery that I reported to Microsoft over a year ago has finally been […]

    Reply
  2. Managing Photo Libraries – Part 6 | Geoff Coupe's Blog

    […] known about by Microsoft for nearly a year, but still has not been fixed in this new beta, is the “Publish to Flickr” bug. It’s probably even a very simple fix – a change to a single line of code would […]

    Reply
  3. Windows Live Photo Gallery – Part II | Geoff Coupe's Blog

    […] of the bugs to be fixed would be the one that is in the “Publish on Flickr” process. As I wrote back in October last year, during the upload process, the XMP Title field gets put into the Flickr Description field. What […]

    Reply
  4. Windows Live Photo Gallery | Geoff Coupe's Blog

    […] of Windows Live Photo Gallery, along with a number of other Windows Live products. Unfortunately, the “Publish to Flickr” bug that I pointed out is still there in this version. So I won’t be using it to upload my […]

    Reply
  5. Microsoft and Flickr – Part II | Geoff Coupe's Blog

    […] Recently, I blogged about the facility that Windows Live Photo Gallery has to upload photos into Flickr. This is just a heads up to those of us who care about image metadata (“the truth is in the file”) that not everything is smooth about the upload process. WLPG makes a mapping decision that I find bizarre. I’ve updated the original blog post with the details. Share this:EmailFacebookTwitterPrintLike this:LikeBe the first to like this. […]

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