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Metadata Conflict

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Peter O'Reilly

New Member
Joined
Oct 28, 2014
Messages
20
Location
Moray, Scotland
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic version: 10.1.1
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
What causes the symbol which appears in the corner of thumbnails, indicating either "Metadata has conflict" or "Metadata was changed externally"? I seem to get this on a lot of images in the library, but I do all my metadata editing - keywords, rating, title, comments - with Lightroom, so find these messages very confusing.

Can anyone explain what they mean?

Thanks

Peter
 
What causes the symbol which appears in the corner of thumbnails, indicating either "Metadata has conflict" or "Metadata was changed externally"? I seem to get this on a lot of images in the library, but I do all my metadata editing - keywords, rating, title, comments - with Lightroom, so find these messages very confusing.

Can anyone explain what they mean?

Thanks

Peter

Lightroom compares the metadata in the catalog file with that stored in the image file. The image file also has a Modified data tag (MDT) that gets set by the OS any time the file is opened for writing. Your backup software will also set the MDT so that it can know whether the file change MDT is older or newer than the last backup. Any of these triggers can cause the warning message to appear. Your original image file should not be important wrt the metadata since all exported will used the Metadata stored in-the Lightroom Catalog.


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To build on Cletus's reply, LR has always had bugs properly displaying the metadata status. If you're sure you haven't edited the metadata externally, you can ignore the status. Or if the status indicator gets under your skin (as it does with me), you can use the Metadata Status column of the Library Filter bar's Metadata browser to select all photos whose status is not Up To Date:
1612978659255.png


Then do the menu command Metadata > Save Metadata To File.
 
Your original image file should not be important wrt the metadata since all exported will used the Metadata stored in-the Lightroom Catalog.
I apologize for being a nitpicker here, but I'm trying to get a handle on the Metadata conflict issue and I don't know enough about it to figure out this sentence - just typos, I realize. Would you please clarify?

It seems like the Metadata conflicts are increasing with the last two updates and I wish I knew why. Most of the images in my catalog are on a NAS and haven't been looked at in several years, but this week when I'm going back to look at several folders, they open up with MANY metadata conflicts. Irritating to say the least. The presence of the status indicators bugs me also ............ but I don't want to mess something up.
 
I apologize for being a nitpicker here, but I'm trying to get a handle on the Metadata conflict issue and I don't know enough about it to figure out this sentence - just typos, I realize. Would you please clarify?
John has it: wrt = With respect to. The bottom line is that it matters little what metadata is stored with the original image file. As long as the metadata in the catalog is correct, everything exported will export with the correct metadata.

I've always since v2 had metadata conflicts. These happen when outside changes happen to the original file. At first, I tried to correct them but eventually I gave up.
To give you an example why you should not worry about the metadata in the original file, take a look at Lightroom for the cloud. When Adobe develop ed this new product, they decide the metadata conflict was not a real issue and there is not even a warning message that the metadata might be out of syne and no ability to correct this if it were.
 
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