Metadata arrow on upper right of thumbnails... Could someone explain?

[stayathomedad]

Could someone explain the how, when, and why of the little metadata arrow?

Sometimes it shows up and sometimes it doesn't...

Do I need to click it all the time?

When should I click it?

Is it just telling me it wants to write info? What happens if I never click it?

 

[Gene McCullagh]

Hi stayathomedad! When you have a minute please use the User CP link above and fill in your signature.

Anytime a change is made to the metadata for an image, that change is immediately saved in the LR database. However, if your Catalog preferences do not have the automatically save changes to metadata then the icon will appear to warn you that there is metadata that has not been saved out to the file or its sidecar file.

There's a subtle difference in the icons. If the arrow points down it means LR has metadata changes that haven't been saved out to the file. If the arrow points up it means metadata changes were made elsewhere (like Bridge) and have not been saved to the LR database.

If you don't want to have the changes automatically saved then you can select all and then press Command-S on a Mac or Control-S on a PC.

 

[stayathomedad]

I was under the impression that if you set the preference to auto save that it will slooooow down LR... and since I have a slooooow system I didn't select this for performance sake.

If I never select it, will it at some point right the changes to the sidecar... or will it just stay in the DB until I take action?

 

[johnbeardy]

All info is always in the database - sidecars are just optional and only contain parts of the info in the database. Some people like them because you can open a file from Bridge into Photoshop and get the LR adjustments. Others back them up, so they have many many thousands of little xmp files and think this provides better cover than routinely backing up the database. Others find them useful to send metadata to other sidecar-aware programs. Others see no need for them any longer.

If the arrow distracts you, and you see no need for it, View > Options lets you switch it off.

John

 

[PatrickC]

Can we do a poll on this? I confess that I don't routinely write to sidecars, but I do backup my LR catalogue every day. But I kind of have this nagging guilt at the back of my mind (maybe just a lapsed Catholic thing? ) that this is something I should be doing. I don't like having out-of-date stuff associated with our images, but I don't see the need, at least for the time being, to write everything to sidecars.

Is there a way to just update xmps files that exist, without writing new ones where the've never been created?

Patrick Cunningham