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FeedbackCommunityMember
Inspiring
April 7, 2011
Open for Voting

P: Prevent loss of Edit Histories when Reimporting Photos

  • April 7, 2011
  • 66 replies
  • 2513 views

When importing DNGs with stored edits (included XMP data) then the history of the photo just shows "Imported..." instead of the list of edits.

I have a corrupt catalogue. (I did nothing to cause the correction :()
The catalogue contains photos which are not associated to folders in the library module. When I choose "Got to folder in Library module" from the context menu for such photos, nothing happens. I imported them just like any other photos, but somehow the corresponding library folder wasn't created or lost.

I tried synchroning the parent folder but the missing subfolders are not created again.

That's why I decided the only way forward is to create a new catalogue. However, the new catalogue doesn't have any of the edit history. The rendering is OK and I can reset it to see the original version of the photos but I cannot see the edit history anymore.

Why is the edit history not recreated? The essence of it must be available because otherwise the correct final rendering could not be created.

I believe edit histories should be available for JPGs, RAW and DNG files. When I decided to use DNG files vs RAW files with sidecar (XMP) files, I didn't know that I'd lose the history with a fresh import of a DNG file. I suppose that if I had XMP files, I could copy these and still had my edit histories.

    66 replies

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    Lee Jay
    Inspiring
    April 8, 2011
    "And you don't even need to store the differences in the XMP - LR could already compute them from the adjustment values already in the XMP."

    That's not true, John. Remember, due to the Camera Raw defaults and the application of presets, the starting point isn't always fixed.
    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 8, 2011
    If one's to have an *option* to write the edit history in the XMP, Dan, I'd rather have it undiluted. History's about how one got to the final result, and restoring only the differences would mean people wouldn't be able to go back to a certain stage of work or use it for Before/After comparison. How could one get that value from the differences from default?

    And you don't even need to store the differences in the XMP - LR could already compute them from the adjustment values already in the XMP. So again, where's the value?
    L
    Lee Jay
    Inspiring
    April 8, 2011
    Yes, Dan, I'll take both of those with a side of fries, please. 😉
    D
    dtull
    Participating Frequently
    April 8, 2011
    Two thoughts on this: I've generally been of the opinion that significant metadata should (eventually) find its way into XMP since XMP can be used as a kind of distributed catalog backup. The main reason I could see not to have history in the XMP is that it'd be too big, but if it were stored smartly as a series of deltas against the final settings, it's should be fairly small in most cases.

    Which reminds me of another mini-feature I've wanted for the history panel: a "minimize" option that elides multiple (even non-contiguous) adjustments of the same slider into a single step. It would turn a messy history list into a simplified summary of all the actions taken to get from original to final.

    The reason that's possibly relevant here is that minimize could probably be implemented in such a way that it could compare the default settings with the current settings which would mean an image imported without history would get a concise summary of the changes. Not as complete as the original, but it provides at least some of the utility.
    Sean Phillips
    Sean Phillips
    Known Participant
    April 8, 2011
    "File > Import as Catalog" isn't panacea either. I've done this before to try to fix a catalog and only realized much later that I had lost many of my collections and web galleries. That one still stings...
    Chad Baker
    Adobe Employee
    Chad Baker
    Adobe Employee
    April 8, 2011
    Feel free to rephrase this as a feature request in a new thread if you'd like to make it a bit more concise.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    April 7, 2011
    John, I had quite a number of backups of the catalogue but they didn't help one bit in this instance because the error was a silent one and I didn't discover it before several generations of corrupt backups. Going back multiple generations to one that is still clean means that a lot of work has to be redone. This is not optimal.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    April 7, 2011
    Lee, I perhaps wouldn't call the catalogues "fragile" but I agree with your overall sentiment. I think you should press the "like" button for the feature request. 🙂
    Still not sure whether the former bug reports works as a feature request. Shall I create a new one?
    john beardsworth
    Community Expert
    john beardsworthCommunity Expert
    Community Expert
    April 7, 2011
    Wish I could work with one hand tied behind my back too....

    In any case, LR catalogues are impressively robust and we have very few reports of corruption. That's why they are worth backing up.
    L
    Lee Jay
    Inspiring
    April 7, 2011
    Personally, I'd like anything that can be stored in XMP to be stored there. 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). Basically, the catalogs seems fragile to me and the XMP data is not so I rely on the far more robust XMP backup strategy instead of the fragile catalog backup strategy. The bad news is that I can't use many of LR's features including collections, stacks, VCs and flags because they aren't stored in the XMP data. Personally, losing the Develop history is the least important to me as I rarely use it for anything anyway.
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