Lost titles

[greenbergphoto]

Lightroom Version Number

LR Classic 10.0

Operating System

1. macOS 10.15 Catalina

I recently moved my library and catalog to a different drive; all the photographs are there, as are the keywords, but many (though not all) of the titles are gone. Any guesses about why this happened? I still have the slightly older catalog (and library) in a backup, wondering if I can redo everything, or somehow retrieve the titles. Thanks for your suggestions.

 

[johnbeardy]

I'd suggest spending some time making absolutely certain that titles have indeed gone, but everything else is right. Are you absolutely certain that you moved the correct catalogue, the lrcat file? And when you moved everything, you didn't go through importing? Are very recent photos in the catalogue, and keywords you've entered recently? Lastly, how experienced are you with Lightroom?

Assuming you are certain and only the titles need to be extracted from a slightly-older catalogue, I do have a script that can handle this. You run it in the older catalogue and it extracts titles as a text file, then you run a second script in the new catalogue to update the titles and it matches files based on the catalogue ID. But the first step is to be sure that it would be the right solution in your case.

 

[greenbergphoto]

Thanks for your suggestions. What's odd is that titles are missing in a seemingly random fashion, some older, some newer. I'm not sure what you mean by checking to see if titles are really gone. Is there someplace else to look besides the "Title" box? I did not re-import anything. And as I mentioned, none of the keywords are missing. I copied the files, then copied the catalog, then told the catalog where to find the pictures. Everything looks fine except for the missing titles. I'm not new at Lightroom, but I'm self taught, so it's quite possible I'm missing something.

 

[johnbeardy]

OK, so you can be sure it's the correct catalogue, and you've avoided using Folder > Synchronize when you "told the catalog where to find the pictures"? You're looking at the the title in the Metadata panel, I assume, and that's the correct place. LR doesn't do random things, so see if you can identify any pattern which might mean something. And the titles are in the slightly-older catalogue?

I ask these questions because I've a lot of experience of users thinking they have a problem because of things like mistaking their catalogue, reimporting, folder > synchronize etc. It'll be tomorrow before I can check the script is suitable.

 

[Philippe Coudé du Foresto]

I don't know in the english version of LR, but in the french version, there is 4 "Titre" (french translation of "Title") boxes, but eventually coresponding to different standard metadata fields. :
- One in the "By default" tab wich correspond to the "Title" field of the standard IPTC definition
- One in the "Exif and IPTC" tab wich correspond to the "Title" field of the standard IPTC definition
- One in the IPTC tab, section "Content", wich correspond to the "Headline" field of the standard IPTC definition
- One in the IPTC tab, section "Status", wich correspond to the "Title" field of the standard IPTC definition

This is very confusing, because if your enter a value in the "Titre" field in the "Exif and IPTC" tab, the "Titre" field in the IPTC tab, section "Content" will stay empty, and vice-versa.

If it's the same in the english version, are you sure you look at the correct "Title" field ?

 

[johnbeardy]

I've checked that the script is set up for the title field and put the it here. There's an important readme document in the zip file.

 

[Paul_DS256]

eventually coresponding to different standard metadata fields.

Yes, I know. There are multiple schemas in the metadata stored for a picture; XMP, EXIF,IPTC etc. However, for RAW files, the metadata is held in the LR catalog and the XMP sidecar files if you have them enabled.

That being said, I would check the program you saw the TITLE (TITRE) originally versus where you don't see it now. If it was both LR, then likely a LR issue.