Writing keywords to file?

[kaitlyn2004]

I have ~5,''' photos in my Lightroom and have not once saved my metadata to file.

Should I select all my photos and write this data? The MAIN reason I did not write the data is because I am still growing the keyword list and photos get updated so it would not always be up to date.

If it matters, I am dealing with RAW files...

Is this something I should be doing regularly?

 

[Sean McCormack]

The Metadata would go to a sidecar file Kaitlyn, not into the files themselves. I'd just make sure that the catalog is backed up, for safety. When you export a file, the keywords will be written into them.

 

[clee01l]

In theory, it should not matter to ever create an XMP sidecar file. However if you delete your LR catalog, it might be handy to have another copy of all that work. Churning out XMP Sidecar files is going to take a bit of time. More time than having a cup of coffee or tea. If you ever intend to have the XMP sidecars for all your images, then I'd suggest starting now and get the batch operation behind you. In my preferences, I always have "Automatically write changes into XMP checked. I never notice any performance penalty for doing this while I am making other metadata changes

 

[kaitlyn2004]

I believe I do have the option to automatically write changes to XMP file... but I don't think keywording is written to the file automatically - only develop changes?

 

[Sean McCormack]

The keywords are written to the XMP, as are develop settings. This is still a sidecar files with Raws, so it not written back to the file itself.
You can switch the Auto XMP option on, but you'll find Lightroom is slower, unless you have a faster computer. It's easier just to save out the XMP manually. Cletus may not have noticed a speed hit, but quite a lot of people do.

I've just taken a peek into an XMP to confirm where in the file the Keywords are..
<dc:subject> <rdf:Bag> <rdf:li>Model</rdf:li> <rdf:li>Rose</rdf:li> <rdf:li>shoot</rdf:li> </rdf:Bag> </dc:subject>The subject section appears to contain the keywords.

 

[kaitlyn2004]

What I'm saying though is that I think I do have that ON but do not see sidecar XMP files for those with keywords but no develop changes...?

Is the writing of keywords still a manual process...?

 

[Sean McCormack]

I can only guess at your meaning, I'm not 1''% sure what you're saying there.

Auto Write will write out XMP files for every image, irrespective of whether or not changes have been made. It's not instantaneous either, if you've just switched it on. It generally runs when Lightroom is idle. That's why saving out metadata manually can be better. You're sure it happened. JPG/Tiff/PSD/DNG won't have sidecar files. The XMP gets embedded in the file.

 

[clee01l]

[quote author=Sean McCormack link=topic=9233.msg62176#msg62176 date=1266887''']...This is still a sidecar files with Raws, so it not written back to the file itself. ...[/quote]Only if your RAWs are proprietary are sidecar files created. Some cameras (mine) write DNG in the camera. If you have a Canon or Nikon, you also have the option to convert to DNG on import. In either case there are no sidecars. Perhaps it is the process of having to createa a new XMP file that slows thing down. I've experiencd this with two computers (one a laptop) and with many images my DNGs are stored on the NAS. even witrh time delays of a network, I do not see a speed penalty. Perhaps it is because LR is multi threaded. I may set keywords and move on to another task. For all I know, LR might be writing keywords to a list of image files while I am starting to develop or set individual titles and captions.