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Henrik2000
Known Participant
May 8, 2025
Question

Metadata not assigned to selected pics, but to neighbouring pics - what's that?

  • May 8, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 1185 views

Hello, on Win 10 i have stretched my Lightroom Classic (current version) across 1,5 monitors (of a total of three), with the photo grid filling all of of one big monitor and the right panel bar filling part of the monitor to the right (see sketch below, perhaps it's relevant?). Then i assigned keywords, titles and other metadata to thousands of pics. 

I worked in a folder, not a collection. Images were sorted by filename (not creation date). Before, I had ordered and then renamed the pics in Bridge. Then i closed Bridge before importing and tagging in Lightroom Classic. The catalogue settings were always set to "save metadata immediately to XMP" (not only to database).

Now i find that in Lightroom, all metadata has been assigned not to the pics selected, but to pics a few slots down the line. Say metadata for selected pic 313 went into pic 316, which was not selected. Practically all metadata is off by a few slots. I never saw an icon for outdated metadata status - metadata is reported as "uptodate" on all pics. I didn't edit them anywhere else. I didn't do tonal edits. I edit only JPGs from the local harddisk, and there are no delays or error messages.

This is a major desaster. Synchronizing metadata back to the intended pics doesn't fully help. A lot of manual work is necessary to fix this (and how i had marveled at LR's ease of use). This stalls a project.

Do you know the reason for this? I never met this problem in many years of tagging with Lightroom Classic. Again, metadata status is "uptodate" on all pics.

Google Drive is synchronizing the photos folder in the background - years ago that might cause problems making pics unavailable, but the problem went away long ago. Sometimes i would pause or close Google Drive, but it didn't seem necessary. Could spreading Lightroom across 1,5 monitors as pictured below cause this problem?

Thanks!

1 reply

Claire H.
Community Manager
Claire H.Community Manager
Community Manager
May 8, 2025

Hi @Henrik2000, Let's try to troubleshoot this! Here are a few things you can try that may help narrow down or resolve the issue:

1. Check Display Configuration: If you’re using multiple monitors, try temporarily switching to a single-monitor setup. This can help determine whether the issue is related to the display configuration.

2. Metadata Sync Settings: If you're using Google Drive or another sync service, try temporarily pausing it to see if it’s affecting Lightroom. Also, try toggling the “Save metadata to XMP automatically” setting off and then back on—sometimes, that can reset odd behavior.

3. Reimport & Reassign Metadata (if needed): As a last resort, re-importing the affected images and manually reassigning metadata can help, though I know it’s time-consuming.

4. Keep Software Updated: Make sure you're running the latest version of Lightroom Classic. Updates often include essential bug fixes and improvements.

If none of those work, can you send your system info so we can try replicating it? You can find this by going to Help > System Info, copying and pasting it into a text file, and attaching it here. Thanks! ^CH

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Henrik2000Author
Known Participant
May 9, 2025

Hi Claire, thanks for your advice. The tests you suggest need time, but I will try to do them. I've here attached Lightroom's TXT file about my system. (1)

Only when looking at this system info, I realized that I had non-Adobe add-ons running (not mentioned in initial post):

  • AnyTag
  • several from DxO

More things I forgot to mention initially: I set the font size to 150%. I didn't empty cache or optimize catalogue for several years. There's ample disc space and RAM.

Of course I must try LR with the add-ons disabled, but again, I didn't have a problem for a long time with those add-ons active and everything else active as described in the initial post (Google Drive active, multi-monitors active).

I just did a short test only with all the possible problematic things still active, and there was no problem this time (no problem with writing keywords manually, no problem when syncing metadata).

What's especially bad here, I also tagged with keywords in foreign scripts which I can't read, but can copy-paste from proper bilingual sources. Now when I see foreign script keywords assigned to my pics, I don't know if they are correct or not, because some keywords in Roman script are wrong, but I can't read the foreign script I see there.

Thanks again.

-

(1) To give you my system info file in English, I switched Lightroom to English in Settings/General. But after a restart, Lightroom unexpectedly re-appeared in my local language. I tried several times, but no switch to another language was shown after re-start (also not to French). (Just below the option to change language, I also deactivated the start screen, but the option was active again when restarting several times, it seemed impossible to deactivate the start screen; de-activating and activating "Save automatically to XMP" in the catalogue settings was possible as expected.)

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Henrik2000Author
Known Participant
May 17, 2025

Now i found a possible reason for the problem described above (that IPTC tags are assigned not exactly to the pictures selected, but to other pics). I struggle to describe it properly. It has to do with thumbnails *hidden under*  Lightroom panels – instead of *beside* panels.

 

Example: I have 3 monitors, and LR Classic is open on the middle monitor (as shown in my attached screen in first post). All the panels in LR are closed, so that i have a full view of the thumbnails grid. And i have a Windows Explorer open on the right monitor.

 

Now when i drag a file from the Windows Explorer on the right monitor to the left monitor – across LR in the middle, to another Explorer Window on the left monitor –, and i drag the file slowly over Lightroom's bottom or left border, panels on LR may open, in my case at least left panel and film strip. In this case, the newly opened panels don't push the thumbnails to the side, instead they cover them and hide them. (In this case,  only 1 vertical half of thumbnails may be hidden, i believe that should never be the case; see attached screen below – is it normal?) Lightroom has the panels overlapping the thumbnails grid instead of creating mutually exlusive spaces for panels and thumbnails grid side by side.

 

Consequence: When i select a string of pics by click and Shift-click, some of the actually selected pics are NOT visible – they are *hidden* under a panel, yet they do get selected because they are part of the string i selcect. And they do get assigned keywords that weren't meant for them.

 

This would have been much easier to detect if LR would show the number of files selected, as every other file manager does.

 

When i have this overlapping situation – left panel overlapping thumbnail grid -, i have to do the following to avoid the problems described in initial post:

 

I click one time on the tiny triangle to toggle left panel (or press F6). After that, the left panel gets properly established and the previously "hidden" thumbnails move into the visible thumbnails grid. There is no more overlapping, but there are now mutually exclusive areas for panel and thumbnails grid. Now there is no more problem.

 

And of course one can close the left panel with another click on the triangle (or another F6). Then also there will be no problem with inaccurate selections.

 

So as long as i check the panels situation, selecting strings of a files is safe. One could even press F6 any time before selecting strings of files, just to be safe.

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