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MarceloPenha
MarceloPenha
Participant
November 8, 2021
Question

XMP file not being created in Lightroom

  • November 8, 2021
  • 3 replies
  • 2304 views

I made changes in some image under Lightroom and I want those changes to be visible for other applications.

As per my understanding, the changes are kept in Lightroom's Catalog, but also can be written in an XMP file, so other applications could access them.

So, I recently set "Automatically write changes into XMP" under Catalog Settings, but no XMP file is being generated - and my files are not DNG files.

I also selected all images in the Library module and selected "Save Metadata do File" under Metadata menu, to force the creation of XMP file, but no file was created.

Am I doing something wrong or this is a bug?

 

This topic has been closed for replies.

3 replies

DdeGannes
Community Expert
DdeGannesCommunity Expert
Community Expert
November 9, 2021

When you select "Automatically write to XMP" Lightroom will begin the process going forward when you import new image files.

For previously imported  images writing to the file will only take place if you use the menu option to "Save metadata to file" or you make additional edits to the images.

 

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 15.0.1, PS 27.0; ) Camera Oly OM-D E-M1.
    T
    tmickow
    Inspiring
    November 9, 2021

    @DdeGannes Is that documented somewhere?  I've never heard of or experienced that behavior before and a quick test seems to indicate that is not the way it works.

    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    November 9, 2021

    "For previously imported  images writing to the file will only take place if you use the menu option to "Save metadata to file" or you make additional edits to the images."

     

    I didn't remember how it worked, so I did a quick test too, and I agree with @tmickow. I imported 200 raws, set their caption, then enabled Automatically Write Changes To XMP.  Over the next minute or so, 200 .xmp files showed up in Finder.

      GoldingD
      GoldingD
      Legend
      November 9, 2021

      Some standard documentation that Adobe has provided.

      First up, right at or near the top of Discussions, the Announcement that v11 has been released. You should always open that, Adobe always posts that:

       

      https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/lightroom-classic-11-0-is-now-available...

       

      Next up, and a link to this is provided in the above document, The What's new in this update document. You should always read those. Adobe always post them:

       

      https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/whats-new.html

       

      And in that document you can read all about the new masking, and the new metadata workflow. Many members problems, gripes, confusion, are clearly caused by not reading what has been provided. Basically Read the Manual a.k.a RTM, starting to be more like RTFM.

       

      Also, tutorials or videos. below is a very good one on masking:

       

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7Fld8eEHsE

        A
        Anonymous
        November 9, 2021

        I'm not sure how anything in the announcement is relevant to sidecar XMP files (or new, anyway), except the frequency at which they're saved.

         

        If you're working with camera raws that aren't DNG something is wrong, you should be getting XMP files. 

         

        As @tmickow said, if you're editing non-raw files of some sort (JPG, TIF, PNG, PSD) or DNG raws, the edit data is written into the file.   Unchecking "Include develop settings in metadata inside..." just keeps it in the catalog instead and won't help.  

         

        If you want to extract XMP from the file for some program that can't read it directly from the image, you can use Exiftool (exiftool.org) to extract it like so.  

        exiftool -o file.xmp file.jpg

        for a single file or

        exiftool -o %d%f.xmp /path/to/images

        to extract an entire directory at once.  Lightroom won't update the sidecar files you created from the images to the best of my knowledge though, and if whatever 3rd party program you're using can't read all of this information from EXIF data on its own it might not be able to do anything useful with it. 

          T
          tmickow
          Inspiring
          November 8, 2021

          What file type are the images?  Separate sidecar xmp files are only created for raw files.  Other formats get the information written directly into the image file itself.

            MarceloPenha
            MarceloPenhaAuthor
            Participant
            November 9, 2021

            Thanks a lot for the prompt response.

            But I'm a kind of confused now:

            The option to automatically write changes into XMP file is only relevant for non-DNG RAW files?

            The option to incluce Development changes is only relevant for all other file types?

            Both options are used to save development changes outside the Catalog and if none of them is set, the development changes will only visible inside Lightroom, amd I right?

             

            A
            Anonymous
            November 9, 2021

            See my reply below, but basically yes.  

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