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Francesco6C19
Participating Frequently
March 5, 2026
Question

LRC modifies metadata of jpeg files of its own accord

  • March 5, 2026
  • 3 replies
  • 49 views

After closing a LRC session I noticed that — totally out of the blue — the file modification dates of the jpeg files in a directory had been updated to more-or-less precisely the time I had moved (within LRC itself) some other images in that folder. Upon inspection (exiftool) it turns out that the metadata of the files has indeed been changed. Only the files that were already in that directory were changed, not the files I moved in. I moved around files also in many other directories, but only that one was randomly affected. As an example, the attached diff output shows the differences between the tags of one of the modified files and its original copy (of which I had a backup).

    3 replies

    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    March 5, 2026

    In general, it’s very hard to troubleshoot problems with LR writing metadata back to files.  Over the years, it’s been one of LR’s most troublesome areas (recently around Automatically Write Changes, as I describe, which doesn’t apply here).  But it’s very difficult to construct recipes that reproduce the problem, and without such reproducible recipes, Adobe won’t accept formal bug reports into its tracking.   

     

    It’s good to have reports like yours, since if others start reporting similar symptoms, we can start assembling a pattern and eventually figure out how to reproduce the problem.

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    Francesco6C19Author
    Participating Frequently
    March 6, 2026

    Thank you for your analysis. I had figured as much, but I thought it was worth reporting, just in case. I’ll keep my eyes open to the issue.

    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    March 5, 2026

    The Exiftool output shows that LR last wrote the metadata into the file on:

    [XMP] MetadataDate : 2026:03:04 18:22:25+01:00  

    You posted above the next day at 2026:03:05 12:17:10+01:00.

     

    Perhaps you accidentally type Ctrl/Cmd S while those photos were selected?  While there are lots of reported issues with the option Automatically Write Changes Into Sidecar Files, I don’t recall any posts in the last couple of years where LR spuriously writes metadata when that option is off, though of course it’s possible.

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      Francesco6C19Author
      Participating Frequently
      March 5, 2026

      Thank you for your suggestion.
      Yes I posted my note today, when I noticed the modified files timestamped as of yesterday, when I was moving files around (after which I quit LrC).
      I would of course resolutely exclude that I accidentally typed anything (least of all Cmd/S) while I was busy drag-dropping files around. But I guess that, if my report is indeed a rarity, it'll take some more cases (or someone who knows where to look) before it is addressed.
      Just for the record: I'm running LrC 15.2 on MacOS Tahoe 26.3.1.
       

      johnrellis
      johnrellis
      Legend
      March 5, 2026

      Have you set the option Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Write Changes Into Sidecar Files?

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      Francesco6C19Author
      Participating Frequently
      March 5, 2026

      No, that option is off and I don’t remember ever changing it.

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