Microsoft Pro Photo Tools 2

Pros

Allows editing of metadata without opening and saving image

Cons

Metadata editing more difficult than the Microsoft "Photo Info" that it replaces & a heavy-handed approach from Microsoft.

Summary

I had been utilizing Microsoft's "Photo Info" software to edit my metadata (keywords, description, etc.) and decided to try an upgrade to Microsoft's Pro Photo Tools. This replacement software is much more difficult to use than Photo Info. A lot of the structure to this newer software deals with GPS, which I don't use in my photography. With this new software this gets in the way of other metadata editing. Also, I could not get the metadata I entered to word wrap. It just stretched out in one long line, unreadable without doing a lot with the horizontal scroll bar. I tried to use "help" to find out how to turn on word wrap, but the help section is a real mess. No index with a "find" function; the Help section of Pro Photo Tools exists only as a kind of quasi-FAQ page. I tried to uninstall Pro Photo Tools and reinstall my original "Photo Info" software but Windows 7 refused to install the original Photo Info, saying it needed a later version of Windows to install the software (???). I even tried System Restore. I could uninstall Pro Photo Tools, but absolutely could not re-install Photo Info. Another problem is this Pro Photo Tool's introduction of a non-standard metadata field called "Headline." There is no such field in my Photoshop CS2 "File Info" entry feature. Sometimes Pro Photo tools would take previously entered metadata from my Photoshop "description" field and put it in the Pro Photo Tools Headline field and sometimes it wouldn't. I'm now forced to continue to use this awkward software. Microsoft has taken away "File Info" from me. Unless you are really into GPS, don't you make the same mistake.