• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • 12 December 2024 It's Lightroom update time again! See What’s New in Lightroom Classic 14.1, Mobile & Desktop (December 2024)? for Feature updates, new cameras and lenses, and bug fixes.

Catalogs XMP files, delete or keep

S

Swanny48

Member
Premium Classic Member
Joined
Feb 20, 2018
Messages
49
Location
Kent, UK
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
13.2
Operating System
  1. macOS 14 Sonoma
Lightroom Classic version 13.2
Mac Sonoma 14.7.1

Several years ago when I first started using Lightroom Classic, I ticked the box for writing to XMP files , without really understanding why !
Now the general consensus seems to be that they are not really needed if the catalogue is regularly backed up, so a few weeks ago I unticked the box.

I would like to update to LrC 14.01 and know that there have been synchronising problems with XMP files. What about the files that I still have for earlier photos. should I delete them before updating to 14.01. if so, should that be done in Finder or is there a way in LrC ?

John
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
There really isn't a "general consensus". To "XMP" or not is one of those DNG vs Raw, Apple vs Windows type of debates.....some users would never write to XMP, seeing it as totally needless, whereas many users would never consider not writing to XMP, seeing it as the ultimate last line of defense against catalog failure. But if you don't really know why you ticked that box in the first place, it's likely that you don't need to use that option.

Going forward to LrC 14 I don't see a problem with leaving the existing XMP sidecars in place when you upgrade the catalog. IIRC the XMP-related syncing issues happened in 13.3, and related to the act of writing/updating XMP sidecars. So if you have that option now turned off there shouldn't be any issue, and there's no need to delete existing XMP sidecars (unless you want to).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
If you have no reason to use the XMPs, then going forward without them is a good choice. If you have been writing to XMP on non proprietary files then the XMP is stored inside the DNG, JPEG , TIF files that was edited. This means that your system backup app will rewrite these files every time XMP is updated. But you are talking about separate XMP files that become sidecar files for Proprietary RAW image files. These take up very little space on your disk. So, deleting them might be more effort that it is worth. If you are concerned about saving space on you disk drive, then removing them would be useful.

(FWIW, I am of the camp that says an XMP file is not worth a good backup catalog copy. )
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top