How to keep LR title & location metadata when posting on Instagram?

[paulgodard]

Lightroom Version Number

11.5

Operating System

1. macOS 12 Monterey
2. Android

With your help I have managed to sync images from LR classic to LR mobile. Now I am learning how to post to Instagram & FB.
I looked at several tutorials on the subject but I am struggling with the metadata.
1/ It seems that the location metadata are missing in the images synced from LR classic on LR mobile. How can I fix that?
2/ When sharing on Instagram, none of the fields are populated by the metadata. I would like that the instagram caption field to contain the title field from LR. I also would like that the instagram location be taken from LR. How can that be achieved?

 

[Jim Wilde]

1. Location data, like Keywords, does not sync between LrC and the cloud. However, as alluded to in one of the earlier posts, it's currently possible to affect a one-way, one-time transfer of existing keyword and location data from LrC to the cloud. Once in the cloud it becomes available to all the Lightroom client apps such as LrMobile. The "trick" requires the following for each target image in LrC:

a) No existing Smart Preview should exist (if it does, delete it first) prior to syncing.
b) Metadata needs to be saved to XMP prior to syncing (manually via Cmd+S if the autowrite to XMP option is not enabled in Catalog Settings).

When you then initiate syncing for the image, LrC needs to generate the smart preview for uploading to the cloud (it would use a copy of any existing SP if one existed, hence why that needs to be deleted). That SP will be generated from the original image which now contains the embedded metadata, so it is included in that new SP. Thus when the SP arrives in the cloud, the metadata is read and used to populate the cloud catalog, so any existing keywords and location data will now be present throughout the system.

But as I said, that's a one-way, one-time deal. Any changes on either side of the system (LrC or cloud) will not sync to the other (though changes made in a cloud app will sync to all the other cloud apps).

I can't help with the IG question, but I'm sure others here will be able to.

 

[paulgodard]

Thank you for the tip Jim.
So I have saved all the metadata in XMP, and there are no smart previews for that catalog.
So what do I do with that collection that I created to sync. Delete it and start again with the same images? Will that work?

 

[Jim Wilde]

Rather than delete the collection and have to rebuild it, simply unsync it (uncheck the sync icon in front of the collection name). That will remove the synced album in the cloud, but leaves the images in the cloud. So back in Classic, select all the images in that collection, then click on the All Synced Photographs special collection in the Catalog panel, right-click on any one of the still selected images and choose "Remove from All Synced Photographs". That will remove all the images that are in that collection from the cloud, but won't remove the images from the collection itself. Wait for that deletion to sync to the cloud (you'll see then disappear from LrMobile), then simply re-sync the collection again and that will upload a new set of SPs to the cloud, but this time with the keywords and location data.

PS The reason for unsyncing the collection first is that if you left it synced while unsyncing the images that are in it from the cloud (via the All Synced Photographs collection), then that would result in the images being removed from that synced collection (because an unsynced image cannot exist in a synced collection).

 

[paulgodard]

Rather than delete the collection and have to rebuild it, simply unsync it (uncheck the sync icon in front of the collection name). That will remove the synced album in the cloud, but leaves the images in the cloud. So back in Classic, select all the images in that collection, then click on the All Synced Photographs special collection in the Catalog panel, right-click on any one of the still selected images and choose "Remove from All Synced Photographs". That will remove all the images that are in that collection from the cloud, but won't remove the images from the collection itself. Wait for that deletion to sync to the cloud (you'll see then disappear from LrMobile), then simply re-sync the collection again and that will upload a new set of SPs to the cloud, but this time with the keywords and location data.

PS The reason for unsyncing the collection first is that if you left it synced while unsyncing the images that are in it from the cloud (via the All Synced Photographs collection), then that would result in the images being removed from that synced collection (because an unsynced image cannot exist in a synced collection).

I did all that yesterday and resynced the collection with 231 images.
This morning there were only 115 synced images in the album on LR mobile, and when I opened LR classic on my mac, the number was slowly increasing on my phone. Is that a normal behavior.
I see that the keywords have now synced but where do I see the location data on LR mobile?

 

[Jim Wilde]

I did all that yesterday and resynced the collection with 231 images.
This morning there were only 115 synced images in the album on LR mobile, and when I opened LR classic on my mac, the number was slowly increasing on my phone. Is that a normal behavior.
I see that the keywords have now synced but where do I see the location data on LR mobile?

That sounds as though the 231 images hadn't completed the sync upload before you closed Classic, so now that you've opened it again it's continuing the upload. As each SP gets uploaded to the cloud it will be distributed to any open cloud apps, e.g. LrMobile.

LrM has limited metadata display options, which don't include location data. So although you can't see the location data in LrM it should be in the image file, which you can verify by looking at the image in the Lightroom desktop app (Info tab).

 

[paulgodard]

Hi Jim
The whole idea from the begining was to help my wife to post images to instagram from an app that allows searching images based on title, location or keywords and see these metadata in order to compose the post to social media... I see some benefit of syncing images to LRm but unfortunately, that will not work for her. I think that my own website still does a better job for that specific purpose. But thank you for your help, I learned a lot in the last few days!