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Help with matadata/xmp

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KeithS

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Premium Classic Member
Joined
Jan 2, 2011
Messages
55
Location
Surprise, AZ USA
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version: 10.3
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
I have been adding gps coordinates, in Lightroom, to all photos as I can determine location. I have "automatically write changes to XMP" option in catalog settings selected (have had for at least for a couple of years). To future proof my information, I want to "imbed?" as much data as possible into every photo file. If I go to a file, that LR says has gps data, in the MS File Explorer, right click and select details, the are many fields for GPS data, but there are no entries.

Now, am I not understanding how the write changes setting is to work, or have I screwed this up?
 
I think it depends on two things: what file type you are working with, and the metadata support in Windows Explorer.
For example:

For a TIFF, JPEG, DNG…Lightroom Classic can write XMP metadata directly into the file header. Windows Explorer should be able to pick those up (not sure about DNG).

For a true raw file, Lightroom Classic treats that as read-only so it will write XMP metadata into the catalog and, if you used the save metadata command, into that separate XMP sidecar file too. The question here is, does Windows Explorer know to look at the XMP sidecar file to get the metadata for the raw file, or does it only know to look at the raw file? Because the raw file won't contain GPS changes, the XMP sidecar will. Unfortunately I am on a Mac at the moment and can't test this.
 
For a TIFF, JPEG, DNG…Lightroom Classic can write XMP metadata directly into the file header. Windows Explorer should be able to pick those up (not sure about DNG).

Yes it does, including DNG.
The question here is, does Windows Explorer know to look at the XMP sidecar file to get the metadata for the raw file, or does it only know to look at the raw file? Because the raw file won't contain GPS changes, the XMP sidecar will. Unfortunately I am on a Mac at the moment and can't test this.

No it doesn't look at the XMP sidecar, so any manually added GPS data won't be found. GPS data added during capture, e.g. from a connected GPS device, will be included in the Raw file and thus will be shown in the File Explorer properties.

To "future proof" the information, consider converting the Raw files to DNG, which will embed the GPS data into the file header, which can then be seen in the File Explorer properties.
 
May I ask does LrC embed information from the xmp sidecar when the raw file is exported to a jpg, tif, or dng?
 
The primary metadata source is the catalog. When you export, if GPS data is in the catalog for that file (and metadata embedding is enabled) then that gets embedded in the export.

You might be wondering if that means the GPS data might be out of date at export. If the GPS metadata is in the XMP file because it was entered in Lightroom Classic and then written to the XMP, then it’s not a problem because the most current metadata was in the catalog at the time it was written to XMP.

The only time the XMP file might be more up to date than the catalog is if it was modified by another application after the file was imported into Lightroom Classic. For example, if you used a separate application to apply metadata to the photos and it can export that to XMP files for the images. In that case, we have to remember to select the files in Lightroom Classic and choose Read Metadata From Files to update the metadata in the catalog before exporting. That would update the catalog, and the export would draw from the catalog.
 
May I ask does LrC embed information from the xmp sidecar when the raw file is exported to a jpg, tif, or dng?

Public file formats like JPG and DNG are extensible and include sections in the file header for XMP. Proprietary file formats are, well proprietary and are not extensible. Lightroom embeds XMP data in the XMP section of the public files in the header. Because proprietary file formats are not extensible, Lightroom creates the XMP section as a separate sidecar file.

When you export from Lightroom Classic you get the option to included limited metadata or all of the metadata. All of the metadata is ALL of the metadata in the catalog file. The XMP sidecar file is only a partial set of the metadata in the catalog. For this reason XMP sidecar creation is discouraged over having current catalog file backups.


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The XMP sidecar file is only a partial set of the metadata in the catalog. For this reason XMP sidecar creation is discouraged over having current catalog file backups.
Please explain context of meaning for this statement "For this reason XMP sidecar creation is discouraged over having current catalog file backups". Specifically, who discourages XMP sidecare creations and what does sidecar creation have to do with catalog backups other than XMP having information about edits? Maybe I've gotten a bit off the point of the original subject.
 
Ask yourself this... What is better, backing up the catalogue which contains all your LR work, or backing up xmp sidecars which don't?

A whole range of your LR work is omitted from sidecars - flags, stacking, asignment to collections (and books, slideshows), virtual copies, history steps. You can backup sidecars if you wish, and sadly people are rather fixated about them, but don't be fooled into thinking it's a anything more than a second rate, entirely-optional, backup.
 
Ask yourself this... What is better, backing up the catalogue which contains all your LR work, or backing up xmp sidecars which don't?

A whole range of your LR work is omitted from sidecars - flags, stacking, asignment to collections (and books, slideshows), virtual copies, history steps. You can backup sidecars if you wish, and sadly people are rather fixated about them, but don't be fooled into thinking it's a anything more than a second rate, entirely-optional, backup.
I always, I mean always back up my catalog. I have LrC set to ask me every time I exit a session if I want to back up my catalog and unless I was just browsing I always backup. I have never even seen an option to just back up XMP sidecars. You are not talking about automatically writing changes xmp, are you? If you are then yes, I do that, too.
 
Not talking about automatic or manual saving of xmp, just about writing these sidecars in general. People then back these up outside LR using their own baclup, but there's really not as much benefit as they imagine.
 
Specifically, who discourages XMP sidecare creations and what does sidecar creation have to do with catalog backups other than XMP having information about edits?
It isn’t so much that XMP sidecars are “discouraged” outright, because the capability exists for a reason. I save XMP sidecars, but only for some images where I need to transfer Lightroom Classic edits to/from other XMP-compatible software such as Adobe Bridge/Camera Raw and LRTimelapse.

What is being discouraged is relying on XMP sidecars as the primary form of backup, largely because it is not a complete backup. Technically, XMP sidecars as the primary backup of edits could be OK if you literally care only about the current state of an individual image. But like johnbeardy said, if you care even the tiniest bit about the long list of Lightroom Classic metadata that is not stored in XMP files (including history steps), then backing up the catalog must be the primary form of backup (along with backing up the images themselves)

XMP sidecar files will probably never be able to store all the metadata that Lightroom Classic does, especially metadata describing groups of images. Because the metadata in one file’s XMP sidecar file is really only about that one image, it probably won’t ever be extended to save information referring to multiple images, such as collections, collection sets, slide shows, Publish Services, multi-image print jobs…that metadata will continue to be stored in the catalog, because only the catalog has the high-level big-picture view of how you use and sequence sets of multiple images in different combinations.
 
I don’t write to XMP by default, for the reasons mentioned. It is simply not a substitute for catalog backups. There is one reason why you may want to consider it next to catalog backups, however: Even if you let Lightroom backup the catalog on every quit (like I do), you could still lose a couple of hours work if Lightroom crashes and corrupts its catalog after you have been working with it for a few hours. Your last catalog backup will then be from before you started that work. If you automatically write edits to xmp, you would only lose the work on the very last image that you edited. I personally am willing to take that risk, but some people feel this is a good reason to write to xmp as well.
 
Thanks for the responses, and the discussion. What prompted my question was the desire to have the GPS (and other) data of my photos (including RAW files) available to people without Lightroom, and without having to go through gyrations like using a text reader. Right clicking (Windows Explorer) on RAW files (properties), or XMP files will not provide the information. My solution is one that I did last year. I exported all of my Photos as full resolution JPGs maintained identical to my LR folder structure. This makes the photo data available to others without Adobe products or XMP readers.
 
Not talking about automatic or manual saving of xmp, just about writing these sidecars in general. People then back these up outside LR using their own baclup, but there's really not as much benefit as they imagine.
I see. No I don't backup xmp or any so called sidecar files. I backup my catalog (not images) every time I do any significant work in LrC.
 
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