[Feature] Comma-separated words in tags should be treated as multiple tags

[lprimak]

I have searched the existing feature requests, both open and closed, to make sure this is not a duplicate request.

• Yes

The feature

Currently, when uploading an image with EXIF keyword metadata, it's being translated verbatim.
Most programs use comma-separated keywords to encode multiple keywords.
Immich treats this as a single tag, i.e. "me,you" should translate into "me" and "you" tags,
but is being translated "me,you".
This prevents searching for these imported tags correctly.

Platform

• Server
• Web
• Mobile

[bo0tzz]

Tags are separated by the | character, commas have no special treatment.

[lprimak]

Hi, Boet,

I am trying to migrate from Apple Photos to Immich. I have about 30,000 photos and videos,
which I diligently added titles, descriptions and keywords to over many years.
The reason for this migration is that Apple Photos is not transferring anything but "description"
to any devices, and that is with iCloud. Without iCloud, no metadata is transferred and I
can't find any photos on my iPhone or any other device rather than the original mac.

I used Photo Exifer 3 to export the Apple Photos library with EXIF metadata intact.
This includes Title, Description (Caption) and Keywords.

Apple Photos uses a comma (,) to separate keywords from each other.
According to ChatGPT, comma and semicolon are perfectly valid ways to separate keywords.
Now that I have 30,000 photos with EXIF metadata keywords separated by commas,
I believe the easiest path to "victory" is for Immich to add additional characters as separators.

What do you think?

Keyword Separator in Exif Metadata
Default Separator Behavior
In ExifTool, when adding keywords to the Keywords tag, the default behavior does not automatically separate keywords into a list. Instead, if no separator is specified, all keywords may be treated as a single concatenated string. This can lead to issues where multiple keywords are not recognized as separate entries.
Specifying a Separator
To avoid this problem, it is recommended to use the -sep option when importing keywords. This allows you to define a specific character as the separator, ensuring that keywords are correctly recognized as individual items. Common separators include:
Comma (,)
Semicolon (;)
Space ( )
Importance of Choosing the Right Separator
Choosing the right separator is crucial, especially if your keywords may contain the separator character itself. For example, if you use a comma as a separator, keywords like "Smith, John" could be split incorrectly. Therefore, it is often better to use a less common character or to specify the separator explicitly.

[lprimak]

I just tried putting in a "|" separator on one sample image, and it still takes it as one tag:

[lprimak]

Here is the command line I used:

exiftool -r -overwrite_original '-Keywords<${Keywords;s/,/|/g}' .

[lprimak]

I think this is related to #12516

Is there a separate job that parses these tags?
I can see some photos with commas are processed correctly,
but ones that just uploaded get a single string.