Help needed in resolving a metadata mystery

[Mr_RossDuncan]

Lightroom Version

12.0.1

Operating System

1. Windows 11

I am running Lr Classic version 12.0.1 on a new Dell laptop.
This was purchased after some long research to make sure it was set up with sufficient Ram etc to run Lr effectively.
The catalog is situated on the laptop along with the helper, previews, smart previews and data folders.
The actual photos are stored on an external drive, along with the backups and Lightroom settings folder.
I have the option to automatically write XMP turned off at the moment.
The mystery I'm hoping to resolve is why do I keep getting error warnings?
One is "The metadata for this photo has been changed by another application."
Followed then by an overwrite or import option.
Another error message I'm getting is,
The metadata has been changed by another application, should Lr import settings from disk or overwrite disk settings with those from the catalog.
The only application I use is Lr and Photoshop.
In my LR Classic catalog, if I open an image from the library mode, do a bit of work on it in the Develop mode then return to the library mode, not always, but quite often this error message will suddenly appear, it wasn't there before I moved from the library to the develop module.
I've not used another application, just remained in the LR Classic environment.
My catalog is riddled with these messages and I'm unsure why they sometimes appear, sometimes not.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason to them.
They seem to appear at random, in some cases I can have two or three images, all taken at the same time, imported into Lr at the same time, one will have the message, the others not.
My work-flow is to import images into Lr and edit them mostly in Lr, I very occasionally send an image over to Photoshop for minor tweaks.
Nearly everything is performed in Lr.
There's a couple of screen-grab examples below.
The first example below, I opened this image out of the library mode and into the develop mode, adjusted the exposure, and returned to the library where the warning box error message suddenly appeared.
The second screengrab is showing how many examples of this behavior I can find at a random point in my catalog, the white highlighted images all have error messages.
The other issue I have, and this may or may not be related, is the whole Lr application is soooo slooow, I think it might be trying to generate previews each time I go into the library.
Any tips much appreciated.

 

[GregJ]

This happened to me a couple of years and I can't remember how I fixed it except I just didn't care because I knew I wasn't doing any harm. So I just updated from disk or overwrote it like those options you had.
It started when I got my Leica Q2 and started shooting it. It uses those damned DNG raw files. The DNG raws have no sidecar file (which I hate not having) but writes metadata to the raw file when you tell it to write to file or just writes to the cat if you don't.
What are you shooting?
Anyway, I bet this has to do with those damned DNG files. Man, I hate DNG files.
I think I just told it to overwrite because that affected nothing when I did it and all my metadata looked good and my edits were fine too.
So, your cat is on the boot SSD , along w LR, and your data files are on that external disk.
What camera are you shooting, and since your Dell is new, just out of curiosity, what did you get?
Try doing some edits (Titles, Captions, file name and some slider edits and write to file.
Also, highlight a bunch of those files in the library grid view and click on update metadata and just update them all.
Play around, You aren't going to hurt anything with those metadata versions and desyncs.
Why are those files DNG? Did you convert to DNG from your camera's proprietary format? If so, why? (Don't do it.) Or are you shooting raw with a Leica or Pentax? If not, do your self a favor and DO NOT CONVERT TO DNG. I say again....
DO NOT CONVERT TO DNG
This probably has to do with those damn screwed up DNG files.
I hate DNG files. They make me almost dislike my Leica. But nothing could make me not like that delicious Q2.

 

[Rob_Cullen]

Following thread with curiosity-
One thing I notice in your screen-clip of many files- I do not see any TIFF files. If you are sending images to Ps for 'tweaks' then you should see TIFFs beside each original DNG (assuming you have Sort by Filename).
If you are somehow opening the DNGs through Adobe Camera Raw, then ACR could be saving metadata to DNGs- causing the 'Changed' badges.
Do you have any backup App that might be writing to files with a metadata marker (indicating- Backed up to the App)?

I hope your Dell has adequate RAM. My xps13 only has 8GB and slows down with LrC & Ps both running.

 

[Mr_RossDuncan]

Hi Greg,
Thanks for getting back, much appreciated.
You could be onto something with the DNG files.
I've been converting to DNG on import for years now, I seem to remember reading from Victoria on this site that converting was the best option.
I have had a number of cameras and various raw file formats over the years and liked the idea of keeping everything in one format and the comfort of being able to open up old files, years down the track, my fear being that old proprietary formats will become harder to deal with as technology develops, remember the old Microsoft DOS format!.
Anyway, that decision has been taken away from me to a degree, I also have a Q2.
This was happening well before the Q2 came into my life.
Mind you that doesn't explain the mystery behavior, I have also noticed that if one of my random images has the "The metadata has been changed by another application" message, if I ignore that warning, move that image from the library module to the develop module, apply an edit (anything seems to work) then return the image to the library module, then the warning error updates from the one above to "The metadata for this photo has been changed by both LightRoom and another application."
This is untrue of course; the image having never left the Lr environment.
I've attached a couple of examples below, highlighting the error message in yellow.
All I did was open the image, fiddle a bit with an edit and returned it to the library.
It's got me perplexed.
I've started doing what you suggested and highlighting a bunch of images and updating the metadata, the issue there though is it takes forever to grind through a couple of hundred, and my catalog at the moment is getting towards 60000 images and I'm concerned that the smart previews folder will become too large, I'm not sure if updating the metadata and DNG preview option is actually adding to the smart previews folder or if that's something else.
My new Dell is the Inspiron 16, it has 16 gigs of RAM and a 12th gen intel processor.
Quite happy with it apart from the issue of Lr running slower than my 10 year old laptop I've replaced.
Cheers
Ross

 

[Mr_RossDuncan]

Following thread with curiosity-
One thing I notice in your screen-clip of many files- I do not see any TIFF files. If you are sending images to Ps for 'tweaks' then you should see TIFFs beside each original DNG (assuming you have Sort by Filename).
If you are somehow opening the DNGs through Adobe Camera Raw, then ACR could be saving metadata to DNGs- causing the 'Changed' badges.
Do you have any backup App that might be writing to files with a metadata marker (indicating- Backed up to the App)?

I hope your Dell has adequate RAM. My xps13 only has 8GB and slows down with LrC & Ps both running.

Hi Rob, thanks for adding some input.
You are correct in not seeing any TIFF files, I've gone back through my library and deleted most of them, they were just too big to store.
My workflow is to do as much in Lr as possible, then if I find a reason to send an image to Ps, for instance if I'm going to print to a specific size, clean up dust and scratches or put a border on the image I'll do that work in Ps, then export it to my laptop and either post it online or send it to the printers etc, then delete the file without saving it back into Lr.
I don't do much of that though and the amount of error messages I'm getting on my files is way out of sync with the tiny amount of Ps work.
I don't have any backup app working, I manually save, monthly, to a cloud service, I just drag and drop straight from my hadrive to the upload function of the service, no third party apps involved.
The thing that really perplexes me is the situation where there are a couple of files sitting together, photos shot at the same time, imported at the same time, had nothing done to them, not even an auto balance tweak and one of the files will have an error message and the one next to it not!
Very odd
There's a good example attached, two images, both have had nothing done to them after import and yet one has an error message (highlighted in yellow).

 

[johnbeardy]

The first example below, I opened this image out of the library mode and into the develop mode, adjusted the exposure, and returned to the library where the warning box error message suddenly appeared.

I want to focus on your examples (not on the virtues of DNGs) and on the messages "The metadata for this photo has been changed by another application." and "The metadata has been changed by another application, should Lr import settings from disk or overwrite disk settings with those from the catalog."

I'll admit that I don't have a lot of faith in the underlying detection of images that need metadata updates, and that's partly because I always know better than LR. I don't think I'm unusual, but I know when I might have edited something in another app. I tend to notice those messages and just decide that LR is simply wrong, just do a Save Metadata, the message goes away. So deep down I regard the message as flaky, unimportant anyway.

* unimportant since the images are backed up and the catalogue is backed up. In LR xmp isn't primarily for backup, and the main role of this messaging is for moments when you do send the image to another app

So those messages may be misleading, particularly the word "another" which would make some sense if it said "this", ie LR.

I don't have any backup app working, I manually save, monthly, to a cloud service, I just drag and drop straight from my hadrive to the upload function of the service, no third party apps involved.

That makes sense. If you use DNG, you need to fine tune your backup approach in this kind of way. Convert to DNG if you wish - the format has advantages. But what's relevant here is that you seem pretty confident that the affected images cannot have been changed by another app.

Are any of these DNGs synced?

 

[GregJ]

Hi Greg,
Thanks for getting back, much appreciated.
You could be onto something with the DNG files.
I've been converting to DNG on import for years now, I seem to remember reading from Victoria on this site that converting was the best option.
I have had a number of cameras and various raw file formats over the years and liked the idea of keeping everything in one format and the comfort of being able to open up old files, years down the track, my fear being that old proprietary formats will become harder to deal with as technology develops, remember the old Microsoft DOS format!.
Anyway, that decision has been taken away from me to a degree, I also have a Q2.
This was happening well before the Q2 came into my life.
Mind you that doesn't explain the mystery behavior, I have also noticed that if one of my random images has the "The metadata has been changed by another application" message, if I ignore that warning, move that image from the library module to the develop module, apply an edit (anything seems to work) then return the image to the library module, then the warning error updates from the one above to "The metadata for this photo has been changed by both LightRoom and another application."
This is untrue of course; the image having never left the Lr environment.
I've attached a couple of examples below, highlighting the error message in yellow.
All I did was open the image, fiddle a bit with an edit and returned it to the library.
It's got me perplexed.
I've started doing what you suggested and highlighting a bunch of images and updating the metadata, the issue there though is it takes forever to grind through a couple of hundred, and my catalog at the moment is getting towards 60000 images and I'm concerned that the smart previews folder will become too large, I'm not sure if updating the metadata and DNG preview option is actually adding to the smart previews folder or if that's something else.
My new Dell is the Inspiron 16, it has 16 gigs of RAM and a 12th gen intel processor.
Quite happy with it apart from the issue of Lr running slower than my 10 year old laptop I've replaced.
Cheers
Ross

I believe Q2 DNG files behave strangely on this update the Metadata stuff and its because of those DNG files.
But besides that, I strongly believe you should not convert your Fuji, Canon, Nikon, Sony, or Olympus (whatever you have or had in the past) to DNG. I could talk a long time about this, but there is just no need to. That whole bit about being afraid of obsolescence is ridiculous. Future digital things are unknown and will get better, and there is plenty of time to convert anything to anything else. If you are worried about other systems seeing your files, you should be more worried about losing those sidecar files. DNGs? Well, you know how I feel about them now.
Let me tell you a shooting story. Last Spring, I went to Sicily, rented a car and explored the island for 5 weeks. It was glorious. For the first time in many years, I did not take my loads of camera bodies and lenses. I took only the Q2. At the end of the day, I would import the DNG files into my Dell XPS 4k laptop and get to work naming the titles, captions, files and do the edits. From time to time that stupid error would pop up and I would ignore it. At the end of the evening or next morning when I finished the batch of edits on those DNGs, I selected them all and told it to update metadata and write to file. That takes a while because instead of having a sidecar it writes the whole DNG over again. See? But I always do it with my beautiful little Q2, the most incredible creature in the camera world. In fact, despite my disdain for DNG raw files, I just bought another Q2 - the Q2 mono!!!! Yeah baby.

 

[GregJ]

I want to focus on your examples (not on the virtues of DNGs) and on the messages "The metadata for this photo has been changed by another application." and "The metadata has been changed by another application, should Lr import settings from disk or overwrite disk settings with those from the catalog."

I'll admit that I don't have a lot of faith in the underlying detection of images that need metadata updates, and that's partly because I always know better than LR. I don't think I'm unusual, but I know when I might have edited something in another app. I tend to notice those messages and just decide that LR is simply wrong, just do a Save Metadata, the message goes away. So deep down I regard the message as flaky, unimportant anyway.

* unimportant since the images are backed up and the catalogue is backed up. In LR xmp isn't primarily for backup, and the main role of this messaging is for moments when you do send the image to another app

So those messages may be misleading, particularly the word "another" which would make some sense if it said "this", ie LR.


That makes sense. If you use DNG, you need to fine tune your backup approach in this kind of way. Convert to DNG if you wish - the format has advantages. But what's relevant here is that you seem pretty confident that the affected images cannot have been changed by another app.

Are any of these DNGs synced?

John, what you said is exactly what I was thinking and I think what you said. Like I said, this happened to me after updating to LR V11 and shooting with my Q2. I had not had those Q2 DNG files anywhere else, not even PS, but would get the error message or message about updating meta. I just ignored it and updated it all. But yes, that is irritating because you then have to sit there while some number (large for me) of DNG files rewrite themselves (if you write to file, and I write to file for a reason).
But oddly, the last couple of times I shot with the Q2 it didn't happen. I think this all has to do with writing every edit back to the DNG file (thus completely rewriting it) if you chose to write to file. But he said he didn't write to file.
I'm telling you - I bet this is a DNG thing.

 

[bobsomrak]

Could this be due to the recent Catalog Upgrade. A similar issue appears apparently because of a Catalog Upgrade when using Publish Services. Photos are Marked to be Republished because of a change in the Catalog Database even though no edits have been done. Possibly this could cause the Metatadata Update issue when you "Touch" a previously edited photo and LrC compares the changed Catalog entries to the Unchanged XMP data which would be different. Just throwing out the idea.

 

[Mr_RossDuncan]

I want to focus on your examples (not on the virtues of DNGs) and on the messages "The metadata for this photo has been changed by another application." and "The metadata has been changed by another application, should Lr import settings from disk or overwrite disk settings with those from the catalog."

I'll admit that I don't have a lot of faith in the underlying detection of images that need metadata updates, and that's partly because I always know better than LR. I don't think I'm unusual, but I know when I might have edited something in another app. I tend to notice those messages and just decide that LR is simply wrong, just do a Save Metadata, the message goes away. So deep down I regard the message as flaky, unimportant anyway.

* unimportant since the images are backed up and the catalogue is backed up. In LR xmp isn't primarily for backup, and the main role of this messaging is for moments when you do send the image to another app

So those messages may be misleading, particularly the word "another" which would make some sense if it said "this", ie LR.


That makes sense. If you use DNG, you need to fine tune your backup approach in this kind of way. Convert to DNG if you wish - the format has advantages. But what's relevant here is that you seem pretty confident that the affected images cannot have been changed by another app.

Are any of these DNGs synced?

Thanks for getting back John.
I think I'll take a leaf from your book and just decide that Lr is simply wrong and slowly update the metadata bit by bit as I come across them, this, of course, will take some time, I couldn't estimate how many of these error warnings I have in my catalog, it would have to be over 10,000 though.
And to answer your question, none of my images are synced.
Thanks for your input.
Ross

 

[GregJ]

I have been digging around and checking and thinking.... I still think it is DNG related, but your problem is much more extensive than mine was. I just checked a folder full of about 400 Q2 shots from when I first got it when it came out around 3 years ago. I called up that folder and had none of those error warnings. It was clean and all updated. But maybe I selected that folder and updated the metadata back then and don't remember it.
Sorry this is happening to you. Do you have any non-DNG raw files you shot? No error warning on those right?

 

[Mr_RossDuncan]

I have been digging around and checking and thinking.... I still think it is DNG related, but your problem is much more extensive than mine was. I just checked a folder full of about 400 Q2 shots from when I first got it when it came out around 3 years ago. I called up that folder and had none of those error warnings. It was clean and all updated. But maybe I selected that folder and updated the metadata back then and don't remember it.
Sorry this is happening to you. Do you have any non-DNG raw files you shot? No error warning on those right?

Thanks Greg, I have had a look to see if any of the proprietary raw files from older cameras have the issue, as well as old jpg files.
The jpgs appear to be unaffected by the error messages, however a quick look at some old Olympus .orf files, which are the Olympus raw formats, are riddled with error messages.
These are a mixture of "Metadata has a conflict" message and " Metadata was changed externally" messages.
Just for your interest I've copied a typical view from a random screen in the library, with the error message images highlighted in white.
It would seem that it's not just DNG but also other raw file formats.
The mystery remains.
Cheers

 

[GregJ]

That's why I asked. So, it's not just DNG-related as I had thought. I was wrong about that. I don't know why you are getting that error messgae. I got it too, but somehow made it go away or it just went away.
You have something going on for sure.
Maybe it would be worth it to stay on the phone with Adobe for a bit....
I bet you get to the bottom of it or a guru will.

 

[jimtricephotography]

Did anything come of this? I also have a Leica Q2 with this issue happening. I shoot Sony and Q2 for weddings and whenever I edit my q2 files there's a significant exposure difference between Develop and Library and when I build 1:1 previews it changes and then will if I switch back from Library to Develop the exposure changes again and it's this neverending issue where I don't know what will actually export. I will say that this issue also only seems to happen when I'm shooting with my flash on the q2. The normal daylight exposures don't have this issue. It's so weird and incredibly frustrating. I'm on LrC 12.1. I've tried everything I can think of.

Here's a vid to illustrate: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g603ksrblyva1bz/Screen Recording 2023-01-03 at 9.18.32 AM.mov?dl=0

 

[Mr_RossDuncan]

Did anything come of this? I also have a Leica Q2 with this issue happening. I shoot Sony and Q2 for weddings and whenever I edit my q2 files there's a significant exposure difference between Develop and Library and when I build 1:1 previews it changes and then will if I switch back from Library to Develop the exposure changes again and it's this neverending issue where I don't know what will actually export. I will say that this issue also only seems to happen when I'm shooting with my flash on the q2. The normal daylight exposures don't have this issue. It's so weird and incredibly frustrating. I'm on LrC 12.1. I've tried everything I can think of.

Here's a vid to illustrate: https://www.dropbox.com/s/g603ksrblyva1bz/Screen Recording 2023-01-03 at 9.18.32 AM.mov?dl=0

Hi Jim,
I'm sorry that you are having such an unusual issue with your Q2.
I can't really add anything further to the story here, my issue was not really related to yours.
Mine was more about why I was getting a significant number of error messages attached to my files.
I managed to resolve my issue by highlighting large numbers of images at a time in Lightroom, up to 5000 at a time, then running the command Metadata>update DNG preview and metadata.
This, although it took a significant amount of time, three days in total, resolved my mystery.
Good luck with your problem.