Color Tagging not Exporting into Mac Finder

Forum|Forum|2 years ago
October 25, 2023
3 replies
505 views

I used to be able to export a photo that is tagged with a certain color and see that color tag in my MacOS Finder window. However just today none of the photos I've exported are tagged anymore after export. I'd like to troubleshoot this... I'm using Lightroom Classic after the latest update.

macOS

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JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Are you sure you did not use a plugin for this? Unless this changed recently (but I don't think it did), color labels in Lightroom Classic and the Finder are two different things, and so it has never been possible to export an image from Lightroom Classic and make the color label appear on the exported image in the Finder. At least not without using some work around that may involve a plugin:

https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/119746/transfer-lightroom-classic-colour-labels-to-mac-finder

-- Johan W. Elzenga

johnrellis

Legend

I agree with Johan: Without the use of a plugin, Finder never recognized the color labels in photos exported from LR, and LR never recognized Finder's labels.

If you don't remember using such a plugin, check the Export settings window, in particular the Post-Process Actions panel in the left column. The plugin may have been broken by LR 13, which appears to have broken a number of such export plugins.

Technical details:

Mac OS color labels are stored as extended attributes in the Mac OS file system. LR doesn't understand Mac extended attributes.

The color labels applied in LR are stored in the industry-standard XMP:Label field.

Vivian Ng PhotoAuthor

Participant

I don't remember using a plugin but I think the Export window also changed a bit after the LR update so I don't think I now see what I used to see. Thank you for the help!