Transferring metadata from old to new catalog

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Christopher Campbell

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I have a slightly complicated question about transferring metadata (mostly Develop settings) from one catalog to another. Back when the early Lightroom betas were fairly slow with large catalogs, I took a very conservative approach and created a series of folders that contained copies of only those .DNG files that I was actually including in my master print portfolio. Now that Lightroom works smoothly with large numbers of files, I have recently created a Peter Krogh/DAM-style "bucket" and folder system for 56k files, and imported them all into a single catalog. This catalog is in excellent shape, with no missing images, and an entirely consistent folder hierarchy.

My problem arises because the Develop settings reside in my old catalog of several hundred critical images. I suppose that if I had turned on the "Automatically write changes into XMP", I would not now have a situation where the files don't reflect the Develop settings created in that old catalog, but that's a setting for which I only recently entirely understood the implications! In the old catalog, the filenames are identical to the filenames in the new catalog. However, because I previously made an actual copy of the desired .DNG file and put it in a folder such as "2''6.1 DNG selects," I have a situation where the standard procedures for the export and import of catalogs doesn't appear to accomplish what I need. The problem is that each of my old "Selects" folders contain a single file or two from perhaps 5' different folders (effectively, shoots) that have now been imported in their entirety into my new, complete catalog.

What I want to do is to associate the metadata for each of those old selected files with the file of the same name that is now located with all the other images shot as part of the same shoot in the new catalog. I have reviewed both Evening's and Kelby's books and 1.1 updates, and have scanned this forum for posts on importing. Even thus well-armed, I am finding that when I attempt to export a group of my selects from the old catalog, and then import them into the new catalog, the available Import options are not giving me what I need. I do not need to import the files or previews, as they already exist in the new catalog. Therefore I have to reference the files in their old location. However, when I do this, Lightroom takes note of the old folder, e.g. "2''6.1 DNG selects," and adds the old folder to my new folder panel. Worse, it effectively imports a duplicate, as I can use the Find panel, search for that file name after importing by reference, and discover that both files have exactly the same filename. When I shift between the two files with the Metadata panel open, I can see that the "Metadata" date fields is different between the two versions of the file, which is, I suppose, the reason that Lightroom permits the import of the old version without seeing it as a duplicate.

Obviously, I don't want to have duplicate records for a given image. What I want is to update the metadata of the new file with the Develop settings of the old file, but I'm a bit flummoxed how to do this. It's true that there are only a limited number of develop settings, and since I am working on multiple displays, I could take screenshots of the settings in the old catalog, open the new catalog, navigate to the image in its current position, and manually update the settings, but this seems like a dreadfully tiresome and retrograde procedure. Given the fact that Lightroom truly does possess a number of modes for updating various aspects of the metadata for any given file, can anyone think of an elegant procedure for associating old settings with new files and file/folder positions? Many thanks in advance for any assistance.
 
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Hmmm, I just found a partial, though still tedious solution. I imported a few of my old files and allowed Lightroom to effectively create duplicate entries. Then I did a search for a given filename, and created a new Collection into which I dragged the two "duplicate" records. Once they were side by side, I switched to the Develop module, and used the "Synch" button to transfer the Develop settings from the old record to the new. Once the files were synched, I deleted the old file and was left with just a single record, properly updated with the old information. Still, I do hope there's a better way!
 
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Here's a further, related question. I just went back to my old catalog, turned on "Automatically write changes into XMP", and made a change to a single parameter, Clarity, in the Develop panel. I closed that catalog, and then copied the old .DNG file associated with the old catalog over the new file with the identical name in the folder associated with the new catalog. When I opened the new catalog, I synchronized the folder containing that file so that it would take account of any updated metadata and did not see any notification that anything had been changed. When I then checked the Clarity setting for the file, I found it was unchanged. So apparently the behavior for updating the metadata inside the .DNG file is also more complicated than I had assumed. But then perhaps this experiment will jog the minds of those of you more familiar with these intricacies!
 
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Chirstopher, nothing immediately comes to mind. There are other metadata tools available external to LR, but it seems to me that no matter what tool you choose to apply, it's still going to have to come down to the human intervention of: here's duplicate A and there's duplicate B, and this is the source, and that's the target, now copy the metadata in that direction.

That doesn't help you in the slightest, I posting principally to let you know somebody's listening. We do have some fairly strong metadata folks here, perhaps someone will be by and have the magic bullet.
 
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Yep, I'd be thinking along the same lines as Sean.

Do you know WHICH of these files need updating, or is that slightly pot lock?

If you do, I'd be tempted to...

1. Back up both catalogues and make sure images are all backed up too, just in case!

2. In the current catalog, select all and choose Metadata > Write Metadata to Files. You could choose the Update Previews & Metadata option instead. Both should work for this purpose.

3. Go find those originals, and check the modified dates show a minute or so ago, to make sure the data was written to the files.

4. Do the same in the old catalog with the files you need to transfer settings for.

5. Replace the images that you need to swap - overwriting the current images with the older ones with your chosen settings. (Actually, this is where sidecar files really come into their own!!!)

6. Go back into the current catalog, select all, and choose Metadata menu > Read Metadata from Files. (Alternatively you could go select each of the individual files that you want to update, but this is why we wrote to metadata before we started - so that the read won't accidentally overwrite settings from your current catalog)

7. Hopefully that will have done the trick - but you see why we're working on backups! It's probably something I'd try on a couple of test catalogs and some duplicate test files before trying it on the real thing.
 
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Hi Sean and Victoria, You have managed to provide exactly the information I needed. Following your directions, I went back to the old catalog to access the critical files, saved the metadata to them, and then located the file of that same name by performing a "Find" from a Finder window in the OS X Finder. After replacing the .DNG files, I switched to my new catalog and read the metadata to confirm that my old develop settings had been successfully transferred. After only a couple of hours of work, all my edits have been carried over to the new catalog, so I'm breathing easy today. Thanks so much for the timely assistance.
 
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