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Import Metadata import fail

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cgbjr67

New Member
Joined
Jan 3, 2019
Messages
20
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
6.x
Lightroom Version Number
6.14
Operating System
  1. Windows 10
99% of the time I only import my own photos out of the camera. Today I imported a friend's photo and not all the metadata got through. In particular, if it matters, the Title, Creator and Copyright fields got lost. In the "Apply During Import" drop down I have "All Metadata."

All the technical data is there - exposure, f-stop, etc. Also, if it matters, I have the Search-and-replace plugin installed. Could it be interfering?
 
I’m not sure what you mean. A camera does not record a tile or a creator in the metadata, and there is only copyright info if the user has entered that. So what do you normally see that you do not see this time?
 
If you are applying a metadata preset on import, you may be overwriting these fields with the values (or non values) on import. Check to see if these fields are checked on the import metadata preset
 
I’m not sure what you mean. A camera does not record a tile or a creator in the metadata, and there is only copyright info if the user has entered that. So what do you normally see that you do not see this time?

Sorry to mislead you. The friend's photo has been edited in LR already, and has the creator, title and copyright in it. When imported to my copy of LR, that information does not get through.
 
If you are applying a metadata preset on import, you may be overwriting these fields with the values (or non values) on import. Check to see if these fields are checked on the import metadata preset

I am not applying a preset. I assume that this is done in the "Apply During Import" section where I checked "None".
 
Sorry to mislead you. The friend's photo has been edited in LR already, and has the creator, title and copyright in it. When imported to my copy of LR, that information does not get through.
If you are importing the original file (rather than an exported copy), chances are that you/your friend did not save metadata to XMP before you imported it. Lightroom does not automatically save metadata changes back to the original file unless you enable that option in the Catalog settings (or you can do it manually for selected photos using Ctrl+S).....so if you then import that same file into another Lightroom catalog you will get the original file, complete with the camera EXIF information, but without any edits or other metadata applied in the first catalog.
 
In the "Apply During Import" section, there are two places to specify presets. One is for Develop presets, and the other is for Metadata presets. Please double-check that the Metadata one is set to None and was set to that when you imported the file.
 
In the "Apply During Import" section, there are two places to specify presets. One is for Develop presets, and the other is for Metadata presets. Please double-check that the Metadata one is set to None and was set to that when you imported the file.

OK, you win. That worked. Now will someone tell me why "None" imports all metadata and "All Metadata" does not? When did Kafka join the LR design team?
Thanks Hal -
 
All Metadata is probably a preset that you created. And it probably is blanking out those three fields. See Cletus's post, above. If, say, the Copyright field in the preset is blank and it has a checkmark beside it, then that field will be blanked out on input.
 
Now will someone tell me why "None" imports all metadata and "All Metadata" does not? When did Kafka join the LR design team?
Quite a few people misunderstand the purpose of a Metadata Preset, and think that its purpose is to select which of the existing data fields are to be included in the Metadata panel. However, Lightroom by default will include in the catalog all data in the image's metadata fields which already exists. Thus if, for example, a Title or GPS coordinates already exist in the image metadata, that data will automatically appear in the Metadata Panel. So the real purpose of a Metadata Preset is to provide a means where certain metadata fields can have existing data changed (in the catalog) or where blank fields can be populated (such as adding Copyright data, Keywords, etc.).

So using "none" during import will preserve all existing metadata, and it therefore follows that you should only create and use a Metadata Preset when you want to add or change the data in existing fields. And if you do create such a preset, you need to make sure that you only check those boxes that you are adding/changing....checking a box with the data field empty will blank out the existing metadata in that field.

Given the above, you obviously need to carefully check your "All Metadata" preset to see exactly what you are trying to do when applying it....it certainly sounds as though you haven't got it setup correctly, and if your thinking is to include all existing metadata then hopefully you now realise that you don't need any preset for that.
 
I understand now. I set up the "All Metadata" with all fields blank and checked, hence the issue. Thanks for the explanations.
 
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