P: Include additional metadata in XMP (flags, collections, VC's, etc.)

My entire catalog went corrupt for no apparent reason whatsoever the other day. LR wouldn't even open. I had had no crashes or problems of any sort.

I used a catalog backup from a few days before, but of course it didn't include anything I had done in LR since it was made. I sync'd and everything was back just how I had it exactly because I use xmp the way I do, and don't use any features not supported inside of xmp. If I hadn't done that, I would have lost several days of work.

I'm a user of the software just like you and "a well-respected member of the Lightroom community" (from a recent thread here). My concise counter-arguments are because your longwinded posts ignore important aspects of Lightroom and demonstrate ignorance of how best to use it. Just because I pull apart your arguments is not a reason to throw insults.

May I just ask what role "john beardsworth" is playing here?

Is he related to Adobe? Or is he a forum troll? What are his intents to continuosly deny other people's needs?

What's the point in offering LR users a forum for feature requests and improvement, if they have to battle around with third party people in pointless discussions?

(What- or whoever he is, he seems to have an extremly limited point of view and understanding of computer technology, and although I respect his opinion as apropriate for his workflow, it's absolutely irrelevant for my point of view both in my privat photograpic use and in my professional work. So I do consider his comments as insubstantial and jamming of that forum.)

"and if a catalog is broken, all is lost. "
Another straw man? Proper catalogue backups mean all your work is backed up and easy to restore. And only raw files have sidecars - other file formats contain embedded XMP and are not "just plain files".

Well, that is Lee Jay's way of working where he doesn't use a range of LR features because they don't get written to xmp! Database corruption is very rare indeed and people are best advised to backup up their catalogues in the confidence that they are reliable!

How long/much have you been using Lightroom? You really do need to look at lot closer at how File > Export as Catalog works, and at its Import from Catalog counterpart. They're the key to slick and controllable multi-machine workflows.

And for an example of a straw man argument... "If you have two machines with Lightroom databases, you never know whether they are in the same state or where they differ." Of course you do - you just have to use your brain! By which, for instance, I mean naming one master.lrcat and the other laptop.lrcat. So not a lot of mental effort.

John

..and if a catalog is broken, all is lost. Where in contrast xmp files are much more robust since they are not updated with a complicated file structure, indexes and that, they are just plain files, and if they are corrupt, it's just the editings of a single picture, not the whole database.

Hadmut, FWIW, I see your points and fully agree. Manual fiddling with exporting and importing (sub-)catalogues is just too cumbersome.

You could have added that

a) LR catalogues are huge. They often compress to 10% of their size using WinZip. If you compress them, further steps are introduced. If you don't, they take up a lot of space and require a lot of bandwidth to transfer.

b) LR catalogues are not (not yet?) a paragon of stability. Now and then they become corrupt. Losing edits this way is not necessary if edits are saved to XMP files. Lee Jay once wrote: I don't trust the catalogs or backups of the catalogs as I've been burned by them going bad on me several times (Dan saved me once). I'm not willing to lose the work I do between catalog backups which means I really want a reliable backup after each image edit, which is totally impractical using the catalog backup technique. As of now, I've given up entirely on backing up the catalogs and only backup the XMP data, which is image-by-image, basically instant and has saved me a couple of times when a catalog went bad inexplicably (I would have lost perhaps ten hours of work each time going back to a catalog backup).

Hadmut, FWIW, I see your points and fully agree. Manual fiddling with exporting and importing (sub-)catalogues is just too cumbersome.

You could have added that

a) LR catalogues are huge. They often compress to 10% of their size using WinZip. If you compress them, further steps are introduced. If you don't, they take up a lot of space and require a lot of bandwidth to transfer.

b) LR catalogues are (not yet?) a paragon of stability. Now and then they become corrupt. Losing edits this way is not necessary if edits are saved to XMP files. Lee Jay once wrote: I don't trust the catalogs or backups of the catalogs as I've been burned by them going bad on me several times (Dan saved me once). I'm not willing to lose the work I do between catalog backups which means I really want a reliable backup after each image edit, which is totally impractical using the catalog backup technique. As of now, I've given up entirely on backing up the catalogs and only backup the XMP data, which is image-by-image, basically instant and has saved me a couple of times when a catalog went bad inexplicably (I would have lost perhaps ten hours of work each time going back to a catalog backup).

Fair enough Hadmut.

I just wanted to make sure you understand how the catalog export/import works so at least you are making an informed decision.

Your points are noted...