Library module Any way to change the Artist Name in the metadata in Lightroom Classic?

[tom.goodell]

Lightroom Version Number

13.5.1

Operating System

1. Windows 11

My camera is set up assign my name as the artist name on my photos. Occasionally my grandson uses my camera. Is there any way to change this field in Lightroom? If not, any recommendations for a 3rd party tool to do it?

 

[David Gordon]

If you feel confident there's always ExifFTool which can write to any EXIF (and other metadata) field.

 

[KarstenG]

ExifTool is a great tool but in this case, it's not required.

Select "IPTC" metadata set in the Library module. You should now see the relevant fields to modify. Creator and Copyright fields are supplied with the corresponding information in EXIF (creator ~artist).

 

[David Gordon]

Interesting, learn something new every day! I always thought EXIF was read only but I see LrC is changing the EXIF to match the IPTC.

 

[clee01l]

My camera is set up assign my name as the artist name on my photos. Occasionally my grandson uses my camera. Is there any way to change this field in Lightroom? If not, any recommendations for a 3rd party tool to do it?

In my Nikon, the "Artist" field is used as a part of the Copyright setting (i.e. © 2020 Cletus Lee). You can change this in the metadata panel. It is in the ITPC Copyright Section.

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

I would suggest to create a preset with just the field Creator and Copyright filled with your Grandson information. The next time your Granson will borrow your camera, you will just have to select all his photos and apply the preset to this selection.

 

[tom.goodell]

Thanks to all of you for your replies! @KarstenG—your solution is the simplest of all. I didn't realize Lightroom would update EXIF to match IPTC. And I hadn't really paid attention to the fact that I could change which one it used—or set it to use both, which is great because you can see the EXIF data change when you change the IPTC data. The only thing I had to figure out was that Lightroom was defaulting to updating "Target Photo". So you have to make sure to select "Selected Photos" to apply changes to multiple photos.

 

[Gnits]

If your grandson uses his own media card… so all the images on that card are his….then you can apply a metadata preset at the time of import, so you can have the metadata fields updated as required from the point of import. That might make other operations easier, such as directing images to specific folders for your grandson.