Force sidecars for TIFF images?

[pedz]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic version: 13.0.1 [ 202310121438-d2af310c ]

Operating System

1. macOS 14 Sonoma

I updated the GPS coordinates of a group of images captured back in 2003 and now LR wants to update the original TIFF files and I'm a bit reluctant for a few reasons.

Can I force LR to use side cars? And... why does it want to update the TIFF images anyway? I have the option to do so off.

 

[clee01l]

Are you getting the message that the Metadata is out of sync? This is an informational message. You do not need to take any action. All the informational message is saying is that the Metadata in the catalog file (your new GPS Coordinates) does not match the metadata in the original file. This is not an error.

Side Cars flies are for proprietary RAW file formats for when the information that you want to associate with the proprietary file can't be written into the file header.

 

[pedz]

Are you getting the message that the Metadata is out of sync? This is an informational message. You do not need to take any action. All the informational message is saying is that the Metadata in the catalog file (your new GPS Coordinates) does not match the metadata in the original file. This is not an error.

Side Cars flies are for proprietary RAW file formats for when the information that you want to associate with the proprietary file can't be written into the file header.

Well, the exclamation point in the thumbnail bothers me. Yea, I could ignore it but ignoring things like that eventually come back and bite.

The TIFF images are the original images from the camera. A Canon 1D or 1Ds and at the time they did raw files but didn’t package them as CR files. Thus… I don’t really want to disturb the original files. Plus, there are other reasons I don’t want to disturb the original files.

 

[John R Ellis]

the exclamation point in the thumbnail bothers me.

There are three badges with exclamation points!!! To make sure we're all on the same page, to which of these badges are your referring (page 84 of the Missing FAQ):

 

[clee01l]

Well, the exclamation point in the thumbnail bothers me. Yea, I could ignore it but ignoring things like that eventually come back and bite.

The TIFF images are the original images from the camera. A Canon 1D or 1Ds and at the time they did raw files but didn’t package them as CR files. Thus… I don’t really want to disturb the original files. Plus, there are other reasons I don’t want to disturb the original files.

Most of my image have the Metadata !. Originally (many years ago) it worried me. It can happen for many reasons (most likely i having your Backup soft ware set the Modified data tag is the file. Because the MDT has set a different date, Lightroom perceives this as a difference between the original file and the Metadata stored in the catalog.

I think this metadata out of sync was a poor app design spec early in Lightroom. If you were to use Lightroom (cloudy) instead of Lightroom, this informational message is not even an option. So obviously it I was not considered important when Adobe started spec-in the cloud app.

It really does not matter what metadata is stored in the original file. Lightroom will always use the metadata stored in the catalog file when creating derivative exports.


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[John R Ellis]

Can I force LR to use side cars?

Unfortunately not. This is a fairly popular, longstanding feature request:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/ligh...tc-file-to-be-backup-efficient/idi-p/12221162

As Cletus mentioned, LR uses sidecars for proprietary raw formats and for newer file formats it doesn't yet completely handle (e.g. .xmp sidecars were used for a while when LR first supported .heic files). For industry-standard file formats that support XMP metadata (nearly all of them), LR writes the metadata into the file itself.

Note that Adobe Camera Raw does provide an option for using .xmp sidecars with DNG. Evidently the CR and LR teams disagree on its usefulness.

 

[pedz]

The exclamation point is like the one beside “The file is missing”. Also see figure 21.1 in the latest FAQ. My son is using my laptop right now so this is from memory. When I click the exclamation point, I get a dialog that gives me three choices: put the new metadata out, pull in the old from the disk, or cancel. Pulling in the data from the disk does not work. I tried it a few times. I’ve not tried pushing out the data to disk (yet).

Probably tomorrow I’ll sit down and beat on LR to see if I can find a way to make both of us happy.

 

[clee01l]

The exclamation point is like the one beside “The file is missing”. Also see figure 21.1 in the latest FAQ. My son is using my laptop right now so this is from memory. When I click the exclamation point, I get a dialog that gives me three choices: put the new metadata out, pull in the old from the disk, or cancel. Pulling in the data from the disk does not work. I tried it a few times. I’ve not tried pushing out the data to disk (yet).

Probably tomorrow I’ll sit down and beat on LR to see if I can find a way to make both of us happy.

Yet the response you describe is for a Metadata Conflict. See the illustration previously.

IMO the Proper response is the one that I gave in my second post. Do Nothing! You should not care what the metadata state was when you originally imported the file. You should care that the metadata in the catalog file is correct and up to date. You achieved this by adding GPS Coordinates.


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[PhilBurton]

It really does not matter what metadata is stored in the original file. Lightroom will always use the metadata stored in the catalog file when creating derivative exports.

Agreed that metadata in the original file is not important, AS LONG AS YOU ARE USING THE LR CATALOG.

However, in the case that you (or your heirs) are just using the original TIFF or JPG files, or exported JPGs, then it does matter.

 

[clee01l]

Agreed that metadata in the original file is not important, AS LONG AS YOU ARE USING THE LR CATALOG.

However, in the case that you (or your heirs) are just using the original TIFF or JPG files, or exported JPGs, then it does matter.

What is the point of have an image data manager if you are not going to use it. I never use any file that is not cataloged in Lightroom. The risk of breaking the link stored in Lightroom is too great. For my heirs, there will be exports, curated exports.


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[pedz]

So, I got my laptop back and fiddled with LR this morning. For clarity, the thumbnail looks something like this:

And when I click the exclamation point, I get a dialog box that looks like this:

Picking one of the images, I clicked Import Settings from Disk. This cleared the exclamation point (and deleted all of my edits but this is for the cause of SCIENCE!!!

At this point, I added keywords, a Job, and GPS coordinates. The exclamation point did not return -- which is what I expected based upon my experiments a few days ago.

I then selected all the images for a day -- all of these were tiffs, on a remote file system, and had permissions like this:
-rwx------ 1 pedz staff 10541456 May 8 2003 650S0346.TIF

I clicked the exclamation point, clicked "Retry Metadata Export", and very surprisingly, it created 175 xmp sidecars. Not all of the thumbnails had the exclamation point but it created sidecars for those too. At this point, all the exclamation points for all of the thumbnails for that day were gone.

I deleted all of the xmp sidecars and the exclamation points did not return. I restarted LR and still no exclamation points.

So... I'm pretty sure there must be a bit internal to LR that says "Some export at some time failed" -- it is not a bit that says the external and internal metadata disagree. There seems to be no way to clear this bit other than the two choices presented -- either pull in the old from the disk or push out the new. If it pushes out the new as an XMP sidecar, I'm happy. I can select all my images, push out all the XMP, go to sleep for a day, and then delete the XMP files if I want to or perhaps archive them or whatever.

This same bit must also somehow confused how the metadata is written out. I did another sanity check and found that usually, as we have all seen in the past, metadata to JPGs and TIFs are written to the original images and not xmp side cars.

For me, all this crumbles the Principle of least astonishment.

Also, for any who want to follow in my footsteps, when the "Lightroom Classic" => "Catalog Settings" => "Automatically write changes into XMP" is clicked, LR starts syncing the metadata out to disk including modifying JPGs. If you try to quit, you get a warning that the write hasn't finished (but its ok to quit anyway it says). There is no task progress bar up in the top left corner. So... if you are going to play and experiment, don't do like I did and muck about with your master catalog.

 

[PhilBurton]

What is the point of have an image data manager if you are not going to use it. I never use any file that is not cataloged in Lightroom. The risk of breaking the link stored in Lightroom is too great. For my heirs, there will be exports, curated exports.


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Clee,

My two kids will get not just my curated exports (100% agree here), but also my RAW files. I don't want to preclude my two kids from going back and re-editing a RAW photo. Of course, I have already established that they have no interest in anything but family photos.

For my railroad subject photos or historical photos of places I've lived or visited , they will be offered to various museums and archives (during my lifetime), which I'm sure will have no interest in RAW files.