• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

Export EXIF data from JPEG to xmp file

Status
Not open for further replies.

steve_20

New Member
Joined
Jul 28, 2022
Messages
1
Lightroom Version Number
11.4.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I had a folder that contained jpg versions of a series of images separate from the folder with the raw files.

I mistakenly imported the jpegs and then used the develop module on the jpegs.

Is there a way to get LRC to take the adjustments I made to the jpegs and then use them to continue working with the Raw files?

Alternatively, is there a way to export the exif info from the jpg to an xmp file and then put them in the same folder as the raw files? I know LRC won't do this directly. Is there a 3rd party app that does this?

Thanks-
Steve
 
The Syncomatic plugin can copy edits and metadata from JPEGs to their associated raws based on file names.

Note that particular Develop settings applied to JPEGs may not give the same exact appearance on the corresponding raws. So best to examine them closely after syncomating them.
 
Hey Steve. I never ever touch a jpeg in LR, except to export a jpeg from the developed raw. So I would do this. Forget those jpegs and just go in and work on the raws. If you have the raw files that is all that matters. Delete the jpegs and go work on the raws. Then export from those raws whatever jpegs you need.

Here is the Golden irrefutable rule.... There is no such thing as an in-camera-produced jpeg that is half as good as a jpeg that can be produced from the developed raw. Never. Ever. Impossible - even with Fuji, who produces the best in-camera jpegs on the market. I can beat them every time, 100% of the time in LR if I have the raw and 3 minutes to develop it.
If you developed the jpeg in LR, there is zero reason (less than zero) to want to transfer those edits somehow to the raw.
Forget it.

Just go spend some time with the raw files and delete those jpegs (if you have the raw). Then export jpegs from the raw after you work your magic in LR.

Then never shoot another in-camera jpeg again, unless you are shooting extremely high res (like I do) and you want to check critical focus at some point in the image while shooting. The embedded jpeg in the raw that you see in the EVF might be low quality for that purpose. But forget about that. Just shoot raw. Then develop raw and export the jpeg. Those jpegs you have that you developed in LR? Delete them immediately and never think about them again. Unless you don't have the raw file. If you lose the raw - you lose everything and must hang onto whatever jpeg you have of that image if it means something to you.

Jpegs. Is there any reason to ever keep them if you shoot raw and use LR? No. Never.
 
Jpegs. Is there any reason to ever keep them if you shoot raw and use LR? No. Never.
Uhh, sometimes I need to get photos to someone like yesterday, so they can pick out the ones they want processed. No time to do a contact sheet. The out of the camera JPGs are fine for this purpose.

My Golden Rule is that everyone is fully entitled to their own workflow. There are no absolutes. Photography isn't particle physics.
 
Steve has been in touch directly. My plugin Syncomatic will do the job - it’s specifically designed to take metadata and adjustments from one group of files to another, using the filenames to match them up.

As a general rule, I would not shoot raw+jpeg. However, I do recommend it when your camera's raw files do not contain a full size embedded preview, and when you wish to choose the Embedded Preview option during Import, which is the fastest way to see and evaluate images at full res.
 
Uhh, sometimes I need to get photos to someone like yesterday, so they can pick out the ones they want processed. No time to do a contact sheet. The out of the camera JPGs are fine for this purpose.

My Golden Rule is that everyone is fully entitled to their own workflow. There are no absolutes. Photography isn't particle physics.
Phil, if you are a pro school portrait shooter, pro sports shooter with a 1-hour post deadline, pro wedding or event photographer - OK. I get it. But from your post I did not discern that.
I have a friend that shot the NBA (Spurs) for 20 years and he sat under the basket and shot nothing but JPEG on the highest-end DSLR pro sports rig available at the time. He transmitted jpegs sized for the web to his editor who was sitting elsewhere in the arena. The editor picked the winners and sent them after a few minutes of work on the wire and they were on the web in 20 minutes with very little or no editing of the jpegs because they knew exactly what they needed and had everything set-up in camera to get the jpeg the way they wanted it for NBA arena lighting.
I have a friend who has the largest school portrait business in Texas. They have 15 photographers who shoot Fuji XT-4s and the lighting is all standard and their in-camera jpeg presets are all how they like them and that has been derived from years of trial and error. They shoot nothing but jpeg and have that down to a science (which is why they switched from Nikon to Fuji recently). The don't have time to deal with raw handling and editing. They get thousands of images posted in a day and have huge servers and processes to store all the images and sell them to parents on-line.
But I think you will agree with what I said about jpeg vs raw. Give me the raw for 3 minutes and I beat anyone's in-camera jpeg 100% of the time. That is not an absolute, it is just a teaching point when I have discussions with new photographers deciding whether or not to shoot raw and when discussing all of this nonsense you hear from novices and equipment sellers about jpegs being as good as raw.
But I enjoy post-processing. Some people don't. So, for them have fun shooting jpegs.
And with the amazing computational photography of these Apple and Google phones now.... Well, that changes everything. But right now, our higher-res mirrorless cameras cannot do that level of in-camera computational photography with their vastly larger sensors and exponentially increased computational power requirements that kind of instant output would require. But who knows what it will be like 5 years from now?
But still, from what I understand about your case, you were past any pro to editor deadlines and were just trying to apply a bunch of accidentally done edits to the jpegs and get those instructions into the raw file edits without redoing each one. I was just saying that makes no sense to me and I wouldn't do it unless I had to for all kinds of reasons. But if you had to meet a deadline and just wanted to instantly get those edits in the raws from the jpeg edits, if there is a way to do that it is beyond me except maybe a group edit or syncing the shots as you go. I don't know.
Hey, if you are a pro and have a workflow then do what you gotta do.
 
Last edited:
There are no absolutes. Photography isn't particle physics.
Maybe not the best analogy - the Uncertainty Principle shows that there are no absolutes in particle physics either :D
;)
 
My Golden Rule is that everyone is fully entitled to their own workflow. There are no absolutes.

Yep, I'd agree with that. There are pros and cons for every choice we make. What works best for one person may not be the right choice for someone else. While we can share our own workflow and its advantages, we won't put other people down for the choices they make, as we rarely know the whole story.
 
I love hearing other photographer's workflows. I have changed mine many times from the tips and tricks of other high-volume high-res raw shooters. There is no bible for workflows, and we learn as we go. A lot of it depends on the equipment and level of connectivity we have. That changes over time.
 
Still, one should not be afraid of distinguishing betweeen good and bad ways to do things, approaches that can be generally recommended and others that are of less value or only worthwhile once particular circumstances have been taken into account.
 
Yep. I agree. I've been doing it so long I can read it and tell if it might or might not work for me. I'm not really talking about just LR. I'm talking about from capture to production and how best to store it and back it up along the way.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top