Thanks Peter - yes, there’s hope still, if there’s enough people with this issue speaking up, it should get looked into, eventually… 
Philou - could you upload an untouched, directly out of camera CR3 file. I would like to put it in Photo Supreme, tag it and try to open it in DPL
_60A7127.zip (26.0 MB)
There it is; I just took a reject with relatively small file size. Thank you for trying that out, Sigi - I’m really curious to see how Photolab deals with it after the metadata changes in Photo Supreme.
Hello @philou,
We are going to investigate this issue soon (approximately in the next 1-2 months). The reply you received from our support is our official policy because we cannot take responsibility for compatibility with any third-party software available on the market.
Best regards,
Alex K.
Hi Alex,
thanks a lot for the feedback. I understand that you can’t guarantee compability with third party software, but if said software only changes standard metadata fields AND Photolab is the only raw processor having issues opening the files after those changes, it’s probably worth looking under the hood…
Anyway, I’ll stop repeating myself and just say that I’m very glad to hear you’ll be looking into it! 
Can we expect to hear from your findings on this thread at some point? In the meantime, we’ll just add any further observations here (such as Sigi’s comparative test with Photo Supreme), in case that helps.
Thanks again,
Philou
This issue will be checked by another team. I’ve asked them to let me know when they fix it so as soon as I will have any news, I share it here. So yes, you may keep watching this thread.
Best regards,
Alex K.
Hello Philou,
everything works fine in DPL:
- I imported your file into PSU.
- I saw that the name of the photographer was already there, I assume you have that in the camera already
- I did some tagging in PSU and closed it
- Opened DPL and your file opened without any problems
- Author and keywords were also there.
So I assume it must be something with IMatch.
Sigi
Hello,
this issue is under investigation but I can’t yet tell you when we will have a fix.
Regards,
Marie
Hi Sigi,
thanks for testing this, that’s good to know - yes, must be related to the way that IMatch / ExifTool writes back the data to the files… (and yes, the photographer name is already added in-camera, that was an out-of-the-camera file)
But at least now we got the confirmation that it’s being investigated by the DxO team - BTW, thanks for confirming that, @Marie. 
Best,
Philou
Not so sure about ExifTool creating issues. I use it regularly and never had any issues.
That’s interesting… I mentioned that because the IMatch developer said that his program uses ExifTool to read out and write back metadata.
Hi @philou
Exiftool can do a lot of thing and is used by other image tools.
For my part, I’m using GPS4CAM to geotag my raw (nef) since many years. This tool uses Exiftool to write in raw files, and I’ve never had any issue with DPL.
Hi Patrick,
Many thanks for sharing that - but then nef raw files have been around for a while, and the issue seems to be limited to CR3 raw files: when I modify the metadata of CR2 files from my previous camera in IMatch and then load them in Photolab, there’s no issue at all, which is why I suppose there is some kind of vulnerability (for lack of a better word) to something IMatch does when modifying the metadata in Photolab’s decoding process for this file type.
@philou - As you noted above, IMatch uses ExifTool to read and write metadata. And as you also note, CR3 files are apparently different in some way from most other raw formats including NEF. If you check the ExifTool forum https://exiftool.org/forum/index.php you’ll see that there have been some changes over time in how ExifTool handles CR3 files. It’s difficult to tell from the user end just what DxO expects in a raw file to be able to process it. Glad to hear that DxO staff will be looking into all this, although as a NEF user I’m just a bystander.
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Hi,
I am trying my luck identifying the problem with the help of Exiftool.
As my trials for both IMatch and PhotoSupreme are over, I would like to ask @philou and @Sigi to add some metadata to following CR3 file, GPS Location, Author and Keyword and upload the file here for analysis. The best would be, if I would know, what data was exactly added to the files.
It is my smallest CR3 file.
Results from the analysis will end up in following thread: Exiftool Forum topic
Thanks,
Zoltán
2019_07_14_6059.7z (3,0 MB)
Hello Zoltan, what file is this with “.7z”
and I assume you mean adding data in Photo Supreme in my case?
Sigi
Hello Sigi,
The CR3 file was compressed with 7zip as the forum software doesn’t allow this RAW format. It is not that uncommon today, but I uploaded it again as a simple ZIP archive.
Yes, in your case I was thinking of adding some data in Photo Supreme like with the previous one from Philou and upload it here please, so I can run Exiftool on it to see the structure.
Zoltán
2019_07_14_6059.zip (3,0 MB)
Hello Zoltan,
went now further into PSU and Cr3 files. What I have not noticed in my previous tests was that PSU actually does not embedd metadata into CR3 files but into sidecars. I asked the developer and he told me “The XMP standard dictates that XMP for RAW files should ALWAYS be written as a sidecar.
Photo Supreme offers embedded metadata for the formats mentioned, even though it is not allowed by the standards” The reason why some formats are ok with embedding is because of legacy issues.
So I guess, it does not make sense to play around in PSU with CR3 files.
Sigi
Hello Sigi,
thank you. I knew PSU is not writing metadata to the RAW files by default, I asked it once on their forum. I thought, you have set yours otherwise.
The sidecar approach seems more safe to me, but on the long term having everything in the raw file makes also sense.
Lets wait for a new file from IMatch.
Zoltán