Actually I think what I wanted to do was to have a batch file which I could operate on all files or just specific ones.
I did find that Bogdan's suggestion worked but I had a hell of a time trying to get the inverse to happen, however, I had that working using -TagsFromfile.
So my idea would be - take out crs data to preserve it :
exiftool -o %%f.mie -xmp-crs:all *.nef
and of course I could replace *.nef with %1 abd %2 to allow operation on one or all files in the folder.
To copy them back I was using:
exiftool -tagsFromFile %%f.mie -@ LRcrs.args *.nef
the args file just contains:
-XMP-crs:all > xmp-crs:all
This could be the last operation before archiving the file
However, it ocurred to me that the whole reason I am have this problem is because I was embedding the sidecar files as a whole, thus replacing everything and since Acdsee doesn't preserve the LR data if I copied its sidecar after an edit using:
exiftool "-xmp<=%%d/%%f.xmp" -ext nef .
I'd lose the LR data.
So now I'm thinking that what I should really be doing is just copying the xmp / ipct data (keywords, categories etc) from each sidecar file when generated by LR or Acdsee then I only have to burn write xmp:crs or -Acdsee:rpp once (if I've done any raw processing in either).
Sorry for the dumbness, I've only been at this for a week and pretty rusty on the command line :)
but I think it would be good to be able to keep raw settings with the file as well as do any keywording in either app and keep them syncronized between them all.
What does excite me is exactly what's stopped me spending a lot of time on keywording in the past. App dependency! I really don't like the idea of changing an app in the future and having to do keywording all over again because they were all stored in an external database.
