A few older files seem to have lost their edits

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
February 15, 2024
2 replies
696 views

Looking at my older photo shoots I can see that a few of them have lost all their edits. I still have low resolution JPG exports as a reference but all the RAW files are back as they were straight out of my Nikon camera. I can see all the XMP files are still there alongside the NEF files but when I open them in a text editor I can clearly they have all been reset.

I should point out that these files have been transferred to an archive drive, but this is something I do on a regular basis but the edited XMP files always transfer to the new drive along with the RAW files. I can see the majority of all my other shoots have retained all their edits.

Unfortunately I don't have any Lightroom catalog backups going back to 2014 so I am assuming these will need to be re-edited if I want to restore the work I have lost. I don't mind doing it for a small shoot but I would be distressed to see this happen on a big shoot so I really want to prevent this from happening again.

What could cause just the odd shoot to lose data from the XMP file?

David

macOS

This topic has been closed for replies.

dj_paige

Legend

Transferring to another drive and relying on XMP isn't the recommended procedure, the procedure is to move the photos (using your operating system) and then reconnect in LrC so that the edits which are in the LrC catalog are still available to the program and applied to the proper photo.

Something has interfered with your process, the XMP files have become empty, and I don't know what could have caused this. However, if you have no catalog backups, and the XMP files are empty, then your edits are gone.

PrintdevilAuthor

Inspiring

Yes I think your assumption is correct but I can assure you that when I transferred my images from one drive to another within Lightroom the edits definitely went with it.

Something has happened in the interim to cause the edits to be lost. I have helped enough novice Mac users in my life to know that things don't "just happen" and it is often user error so I am sure something has triggered this to happen to just a few shoots. It's bizarre that I have older shoots where the XMP data has been retained. I now feel duty bound to go through all my photo shoots to see if they have retained their edits.

The problem is that my backed up RAWs and XMPs are all exact copies of what I have on my current archive drive therefore the backup drive also contains XMP files where the data has been lost.

DdeGannes

Community Expert

@Printdevil , you stated " but all the RAW files are back as they were straight out of my Nikon camera. I can see all the XMP files are still there alongside the NEF files but when I open them in a text editor I can clearly they have all been reset."

The edits you did to your NEF files are in the XMP file only applications that can read those edits are LrC and Adobe Camera Raw.. What text editor are you referring to.?

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.3; PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

PrintdevilAuthor

Inspiring

I can see all the XMP data in Apple TextEdit.

If I compare the data in this file where the data has been lost to the XMP file that has been edited I can see loads of differences in the text.

DdeGannes

Community Expert

Apple TextEdit would read what "Metadata" it can from the XMP file but it's not able to read the "Edits" to did in LrC Develop Module.

Regards, Denis: iMac 27” mid-2015, macOS 11.7.10 Big Sur; 2TB SSD, 24 GB Ram, GPU 2 GB; LrC 12.5,; Lr 6.5, PS 24.7,; ACR 15.5,; (also Laptop Win 11, ver 24H2, LrC 15.3; PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.

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