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dtalbertphoto63
Participating Frequently
Dec 29, 2011 3:49 AM UTC
Released

P: unknown error while writing metadata to this photo

Lightroom 3.6 - on some photos I get a ! mark saying there is a unknown error while writing metadata to this photo. retry? - which I do and it still will not save. No other message is displayed. I've verified there are no 'read-only' permissions on both my folder and photos as well as the catalog folder and files. Ever photo that I have noticed this on as a exif version of 0210. ( not sure if it's related or not ).

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    Gila_Ski
    Participant
    Jan 9, 2012 7:26 PM UTC
    I have the same problem, but it's when doing a roundtrip from my LR 3.6 to, say, Nik's Color Efex Pro 4. When the tiff image is returned to LR from the plug-in app, I get the same "unknown error while writing metadata to this photo" exclamation point. One way to avoid this until bug is fixed is to revert to LR 3.5. Another way is to export a copy of the tiff image (as a tiff) and then reimport it into your catalog. A third way to handle this is to ignore it, which is what I've been doing while waiting for Adobe to issue a bug fix.
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    dfranzen_camera_raw
    Adobe Employee
    dfranzen_camera_raw
    Adobe Employee
    Jan 3, 2012 5:01 PM UTC
    Hi Dean,

    Thank you for reporting this issue and posting the file! I've reproduced the problem and logged a bug--we'll proceed with more in-depth investigation into the problem.

    The metadata in the file seems to indicate that you worked with this file using Adobe Premier Elements 8 and Elements Organizer 9.0. Did you use any other software to process or modify the file before you imported it into Lightroom? Can you give me a rundown of what your workflow was with this photo--from scanning through the Lightroom import?

    Thanks for your help,
    David
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    areohbee
    areohbee
    Legend
    Dec 31, 2011 1:31 AM UTC
    Perhaps we'll see some more bugs fixed in Lightroom too in the next half decade or so... ;-}
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    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    Dec 31, 2011 1:01 AM UTC
    Well, maybe Adobe is finally starting to fix some of the metadata bugs in PSE (after 5 years)!
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    areohbee
    areohbee
    Legend
    Dec 30, 2011 10:22 PM UTC
    This forum is the bug report channel - consider it reported (acknowledgement may take a while...).
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    dtalbertphoto63Author
    Participating Frequently
    Dec 30, 2011 8:00 PM UTC
    further testing: I loaded the offending photo into Elements 10, imported the keywords, and just used the option to 'write keyword tags and properties info to photo'. I went back to lightroom and was prompted that metadate was changed by a external application, should lightroom import the changes from disk or overwrite disk setting with those from the catalog? - I selected to overwrite disk settings with those from the catalog - and it worked. So apparently PSE 10 is more forgiving and corrected the issue as well.
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    dtalbertphoto63Author
    Participating Frequently
    Dec 30, 2011 6:03 PM UTC
    to my knowledge the only software used besides the scanner software to create the file was PSE 9 before lightroom.
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    dtalbertphoto63Author
    Participating Frequently
    Dec 30, 2011 4:23 PM UTC
    to my knowledge the only software used besides the scanner software to create the file was PSE 9 before lightroom.

    Thank you both for looking into this, I at least have a workaround ot repair the offending photos that are not saving metadata. As being new to this forum what is the next step here to get this issue into Adobe's hands to improve their software?
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    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    Dec 30, 2011 6:35 AM UTC
    Agreed. At a very minimum, the error message from LR could be much more informative.
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    areohbee
    areohbee
    Legend
    Dec 30, 2011 6:22 AM UTC
    It may be a bug in Elements that is at the root of this problem, but it seems Lightroom is not "trying very hard" to deal with it. Both exiftool and acdsee can read and update the metadata, including keywords, in this "possibly not to spec" file.
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