P: Save Metadata To File doesn't change metadata status, Read Metadata From File doesn't always work

@Rikk 

There were two issues with the Save Metadata discussed in this thread.  The issue with B&W was resolved but the similar issue with Crop and Rotate is still a problem in 10.2.  

Updates to Lightroom Classic and the Lightroom Ecosystem products for Desktop, Mobile and Web were released today and contain a fix for this issue.

Please refresh your Creative Cloud application and install your update when it becomes available. Thank you for your patience.

*umbighouse 

Your issue seems similar to these.

Note: This is a reproduceable bug. It seems to be present in v10x of LR Classic, but not in older v9x versions

ISSUE: Crop settings aren't maintained when IPTC metadata is updated in another program.

REPRODUCABLE STEPS:

• Open a JPG photo in LR Classic
• Crop, rotate, and apply a LR Develop preset
• Metadata\Save Metadata to File (this saves the settings within the JPG file itself)
• Open the photo in Photo Mechanic
• Enter text in an IPTC metadata field, such as a Caption or Keyword
• Returned to LR Classic and did a Metadata\Read Metadata from File to update the IPTC metadata
• The Caption/Keyword text updates appear

However, the crop setting is lost and reset to the 'As-shot' setting

Older LR Classic version works OK
This issue only happens in LR Classic v10. An Adobe tech support agent asked me to install an older v9.4 version of LR Classic, and the issue IS NOT present in that version. The crop settings are maintained when reading updated IPTC metadata.

For me it is also only B&W images. I actually converted to color and the metadata saved without trouble. Also, the DNGs are updating according to finder, just LR doesn't recognize they have.

I get that it can be frustrating to see other people reporting the same issue, but merging conversations is a good thing because it combines all of the votes and conversation so the engineers can see all of the different reports in one place, so they can hopefully catch all of the different variations. I verified it without a NAS too (not remembering this thread existed), and uploaded a sample catalog to internal bug LRD-4205847 yesterday. 

There may be a good reason for merging conversations, but in this instance it is extremely frustrating! I have been fighting with this icon/badge/whatever not being updated ever since LR 10x got updated. I am NOT using a NAS. It doesn't matter what changes I've made (or have not made). Some of the problem files are from years ago and have not been touched. I found them on one of my searches for unsaved metadata changes. Previously they had not been flagged by those searches. These files are on my INTERNAL hard drive, NOT a NAS. Sorry, but reading this topic has been a major exercise in frustration.

Why conversations get merged:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-auto-import-to-folders-organized-by-date/5f5f44f14b561a3d422ab0ba?commentId=5f5f48984b561a3d422bdf45 

The bug report TomM linked to describes the same issue -- crop information isn't properly read by the Metadata > Read Metadata From File command.  The recipe for reproducing the bug doesn't involve NAS. 

Adobe acknowledged the bug on November 1, 2020, which means that it has been filed in their internal tracking system.  But that doesn't indicate when they'll prioritize a fix. They have their hands full with the performance/crashing issues and lots of other bugs also introduced in LR 10 -- a real mess.

@TomM Yes somehow, however I have seen that thread previous to my post and concluded that the described issue is more on the loss of metadata when writing metadata changes out to disk when files are located on NAS drives which afterwards results in inconsistent indication whether metadata is up to date or not. Possibly both issues might be having similar/same root cause.

To me it looks that handling (reading and possibly writing) metadata from sidecar files seems to be somehow broken since V10.

What I forgot to mention: I'm running Lightroom Classic on Windows 10.