Library module Metadata has changed

[MarcRJacobs]

Lightroom Version Number

13.5.1

Operating System

1. macOS 15 Sequoia

I just noticed that in the Metadata filter that I have 106 photos that have the "Has been changed" notation. Since they are unedited by me since they were loaded, I selected them all and right-clicked to "Metadata > Save metadata to files". I could see it doing it as the counts decreased. As the "Saving Metadata" progress bar was the count was decreasing and then started increasing until all 106 were back in the same status.

I don't see anything special about the photos, they are an assortment of JPGs, PNGs and TIFs.

Any ideas?

 

[Califdan]

Age old problem that has plagued us for more than a decade. Some folks have the problem and some folks don't. For those who do (like me) it is impossible to ever get all the metadata up to date and makes the "automatically save metadata to disk" option useless as it can never finish as images just saved pop back into the 'needs to be saved' group again. And, round and round we go.

 

[Paul McFarlane]

After saving to files, try reading from files. Usually sorts it.

 

[clee01l]

I just noticed that in the Metadata filter that I have 106 photos that have the "Has been changed" notation. Since they are unedited by me since they were loaded, I selected them all and right-clicked to "Metadata > Save metadata to files". I could see it doing it as the counts decreased. As the "Saving Metadata" progress bar was the count was decreasing and then started increasing until all 106 were back in the same status.

I don't see anything special about the photos, they are an assortment of JPGs, PNGs and TIFs.

Any ideas?

This is not an error message but an informational message. Since you should never access the original files outside of Lightroom and all of the metadata used for exports is taken from the LrC catalog, should you care that there is a metadata mismatch? I ignore the message and this has never been a problem.

There is no good reason to automatically write to XMP, there is a very good reason to maintain frequent backups of the catalog file instead.

My advice is simply ignore the message and keep your catalog backups up to date.


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[MarcRJacobs]

I've been an Adobe user for a long time now, I do Catalog, Classic folder, Adobe Settings and Photo backups every night and archive 31 days. I feel the need to protect my from both myself and in particular Adobe.

I was just curious about the metadata thing. don't really use XMPs anymore, as photos I have processed outside are always DNGs.

Thanks all

 

[MarcRJacobs]

After saving to files, try reading from files. Usually sorts it.

No luck, but was hopeful

 

[clee01l]

I was just curious about the metadata thing. don't really use XMPs anymore, as photos I have processed outside are always DNGs.

Thanks all

If you have checked the “Automatic write to XMP, you are using XMP. In nonproprietary files like DNG the XMP is a section included in the DNG file header. Proprietary RAW files can not expose the header to XMP update so Adobe writes the XMP out as a separate XML text file.


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[Gnits]

Why specific benefit do you expect to achieve by saving metadata to file.

 

[MarcRJacobs]

If you have checked the “Automatic write to XMP, you are using XMP. In nonproprietary files like DNG the XMP is a section included in the DNG file header. Proprietary RAW files can not expose the header to XMP update so Adobe writes the XMP out as a separate XML text file.


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I do not have it checked, I turned it off after the 13.2 syncing fiasco, but thanks for the reminder. I was just curious why these 100+ files were acting like this... now, I'll just forget it and not look at the metadata status.

 

[MarcRJacobs]

Why specific benefit do you expect to achieve by saving metadata to file.

I am not saving metadata to file, with the exception of these, because I was trying to solve the advice Adobe was giving me about these files. In fact, I'm thing of hunting down each one of these files, deleting the XMP and assuming Adobe will stop pointing them out, since all my other files are already XMP-less. We'll see, I'll just rename them first.

 

[Paul McFarlane]

No luck, but was hopeful

I have occasionally found do the Save, then the Read, then another Save.

 

[MarcRJacobs]

Thank, I'll give it a try, but from what I am gathering from this thread, it may just be an issue to fight with to no avail, or to ignore. I'll give your idea a try, and then I think I may just join the ignore group.

 

[MarcRJacobs]

I have given up pursuing this issue, but just for reference, I found out why this can't be repaired.

To get the info from displaying this metadata change I thought I would give a try to going to the photo using "Show In Finder" and deleting the xmp file on one photo, just to see if the count decreased. To my surprise there was no xmp file. Being somewhat puzzled by this, while the finder window was open and highlighting the file I was testing with, I went back to LrC, and told it to save metadata to file. I file momentarily disappeared from the list of images with metadata changes and they came right back, as I expected. The interesting part was that no XMP was ever created next to the photo in finder. If LrC has no XMP for a photo, how can it ever determine if the metadata has changed or not? Is it comparing the photo to something it stores in the catalog? Very puzzling.

 

[ml_lrcl]

I have given up pursuing this issue, but just for reference, I found out why this can't be repaired.

To get the info from displaying this metadata change I thought I would give a try to going to the photo using "Show In Finder" and deleting the xmp file on one photo, just to see if the count decreased. To my surprise there was no xmp file. Being somewhat puzzled by this, while the finder window was open and highlighting the file I was testing with, I went back to LrC, and told it to save metadata to file. I file momentarily disappeared from the list of images with metadata changes and they came right back, as I expected. The interesting part was that no XMP was ever created next to the photo in finder. If LrC has no XMP for a photo, how can it ever determine if the metadata has changed or not? Is it comparing the photo to something it stores in the catalog? Very puzzling.

This comes from Adobe's somewhat confusing use of "XMP." It's actually a structured markup language to record all of the settings. It doesn't actually matter where it's saved, as long as the software can recognize/associate the metadata with the file.

Per @clee01l :

If you have checked the “Automatic write to XMP, you are using XMP. In nonproprietary files like DNG the XMP is a section included in the DNG file header. Proprietary RAW files can not expose the header to XMP update so Adobe writes the XMP out as a separate XML text file.

But, the wording of that setting is confusing. If you save metadata to file manually, the develop-info metadata is also "written in XMP." For a file format like DNG, the setting turned off means it's just not written automatically with each change. With a manual save—just like the automatic save—if you're using a supported file format it's just written into the header of the file. You'd only be able to see the change with exiftool or something like that. (I'm honestly not sure what it does if you manually save with a proprietary RAW—unsure if it creates the sidecar or not.)

My experience is that even when it saves and jumps back to "metadata has changed," it did indeed write the changes to the header properly—something in LrC just makes it thinks there are new changes, even if there aren't. I'm with @Califdan on this one in terms of sighing, living with it, and moving on.

I've got the same problem. I only manually save, not automatically. I save when I want the metadata saved in the file for backup purposes. Sometimes it says it still has been changed. It's annoying, but... c'est la Lightroom?

 

[MarcRJacobs]

Hahaha, pretty funny. I haven't used "save xmp" in catalog, since the sync issues started in 13.2 per clee01 advice. I just save them manually on photos I send to other people for processing and only when the photo is not a dng. I think it's time to ignore the issue per all the recommendations and see what 14.0 has in store for us.