P: Ability to see EXIF data

Adobe doesn't provide technical support for 3rd party plugins, of course, but they do support them by way of investing a substantial part of Lr development resources so they can be written by 3rd parties and used by the Lr user-base... Maybe an Exif viewer should be your foray into plugins...

In any case, judging from Adobe's response, I don't think you can count on complete Exif metadata support in Lr4. Given that, you may want to make a prioritized list of which items are most important, since they are more likely to add them for you, if they know which ones you want most.

All plugins on the exchange are tested by Adobe QE.

PS - that includes ExifMeta and Jeffrey's...

Not pushing - just correcting...

I meant to say "Adobe doesn't test or support plugins..." but I can't change it.

LR doesn't test or support plugins, so they are not an answer to every problem.

In my view, plugins are a viable alternative if they are either (i) a temporary solution pluging-up a hole in one version of LR that is to be addressed in the next version or (ii) or so unique or creative or go beyond the core functions of LR or cater to a specific isolated use, that Adobe couldn't be expected to replicate them, provided that Adobe does something to boost confidence in plugins.

Consider that LR has free access to the system and now to a user's online accounts as well. I can't just haphazardly add 40 plugins (which still wouldn't plug-up all of the holes, some of which have been known since LR 1) to my system. There needs to be some transparency, control and testing of plugins before I jump in, and then I will pick only a handful of really useful things.

See also Jeffrey's Metadata Viewer.

All the info in maker notes is plain text in standard tif blocks, at least for most mfr models. In the case of Nikon, its even clearly documented, I dunno bout the others. I would think Adobe could just fish it out and display it "undeciphered". The users know how to interpret it. The only deciphering needed, IMO, is to unescape the few fields that have some uuencoding (e.g. GPS). I mean if ExifTool & ACDSee can do it, Adobe can too, no?

PS - Apple is harvesting focus points from maker notes to display in Aperture for various models.

Surely Adobe can figure this out...

Chris, I really don't know much about it. I just blindly used ExifTool output to populate metadata fields without interpretation. ACDSee supports everything, but I don't know how they did it, or whether they do it for all mfr models... Maybe somebody else can provide the specific information you need.

Again, we need specifics. Maker notes are proprietary, and almost entirely undocumented - that makes them kind of difficult to support correctly. We can try, but we may not succeed where the manufacturer is going out of their way to make the data inaccessible.

Once again I'm in a quandry:

I think this is a really good idea. So good that I wrote a plugin which does exactly what you are asking for, and although its not as seamless as native, its good enough for me, for now.

So do I vote for this request?

I feel sorry for people who can't tap all the exif metadata in Lightroom, because they aren't willing to put up with ExifMeta's "seams", or they don't know about it, or they don't trust plugins, or are embarrassed to admit they are intimidated by them..., but I don't have any missing metadata whatsoever in my copy of Lightroom.

I think Adobe could implement native support for Exif metadata that is all inclusive - even if its manufacturer proprietary..., as exiftool can do now.

In the mean time, I just made a change to ExifMeta to include *all* of a photo's Exif data in Lightroom as a big block of text in right-hand library panel for viewing (not usable in lib filters nor smart collections). There is also the long-standing capability to select *any* individual fields that *can* be used in lib filters and smart collections.

Whatever exiftool supports, Lightroom supports too via ExifMeta.

PS - ACDSee supports all exif metadata too - deciphered, formatted, in database for searching & sorting... (including maker notes)