P: Metadata collisions between catalogue and files

I dont know why Adobe is dragging their feet on this one. Yes, there are some technical issues around when the info is getting updated, and yes, all are easily solvable, or so it seems to me too, so no - I dont have a clue why Lr3 hasn't got this remedied - maybe Lr4 (or Lr3.5, ha-ha).

And to comment on an earlier post in this thread, yes, afaict, Lightroom could easily have a smart folder criterion for "unsaved metadata" and it would be very helpful to have such a folder for those who do not "automatically save metadata". I can see no reason why Adobe couldn't implement this immediately.

And to comment on an earlier post in this thread, yes, afaict, Lightroom could easily have a smart folder criterion for "unsaved metadata" and it would be very helpful to have such a folder for those who do not "automatically save metadata". I can see no reason why Adobe couldn't implement this immediately.

Exactly. LR can't know everything about every file, so Adobe has decided that it would only confuse the user to pretend that it knows everything. However, when LR knows that there is a conflict (it has consulted the file's modification date, and found a conflict), it puts up an icon for that file. I am suggesting that immediately after a synchronization operation, it does know everything for that folder, and can act differently.

Exactly. LR can't know everything about every file, so Adobe has decided that it would only confuse the user to pretend that it knows everything. However, when LR knows that there is a conflict (it has consulted the file's modification date, and found a conflict), it puts up an icon for that file. I am suggesting that immediately after a synchronization operation, it does know everything for that folder, and can act differently.

I think Lightroom's background checking is on-demand, sorta like preview generation... - It doesn't necessarily know about metadata conflicts catalog-wide (although it could...).

See related idea to detect and identify metadata conflicts, catalog-wide along with other potential issues: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

I think Lightroom's background checking is on-demand, sorta like preview generation... - It doesn't necessarily know about metadata conflicts catalog-wide (although it could...).

See related idea to detect and identify metadata conflicts, catalog-wide along with other potential issues: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

Alan wrote, "Absent any official (or unofficial) response from Adobe, I have assumed that the reason this feature has not been implemented is because it is in general a very expensive feature to implement (in terms of disk access)."

LR already implements automatic background checking for metadata conflicts and displays the conflicts with an icon on the Library thumbnails, and it records the conflicts in its catalog.

What people are asking for here is pretty simple: a way to filter just those images that LR has already identified and recorded in its catalog as having conflicts.

In another thread, some people would also like to have a mechanism to see the fields that are in conflict and be able to choose on a field-by-field basis how to resolve the conflict.

Absent any official (or unofficial) response from Adobe, I have assumed that the reason this feature has not been implemented is because it is in general a very expensive feature to implement (in terms of disk access). In order to know the metadata status of a catalog, you need to know the modification time of all files in the catalog, which can only be done one-by-one. I think that mac file systems allow you to easily find changed files, but I don't know about Windows, so relying on that would make for a confusing interface.

However, after a folder is synchronized, the metadata status of all the files is known (or is known to the time of the synchronization). I wonder if Adobe could somehow lever off the synchronization process to create temporary found sets with various metadata states, but only allow access to them immediately after synchronization (when they are likely, but not assured, to be correct)?

I think we all feel the need for this, that any even halfway usable solution would be a great boon.

I would really like to see a Unsaved Metadata Smart Collection item.