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Participant
March 20, 2026
Question

I'd like to update the metadata of my photos (imported into Lr Cloud, in my cloud storage) from code

  • March 20, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 36 views

I’ve written myself an app to generate Alt-text for my images, working against local files. I’d rather store that alt-text back into the lightroom ecosystem though, so that it is persisted just as if I entered it manually into the metadata in Lr. Is there a way to accomplish this through an API or local file editing? Note that I don’t use Lightroom Classic, I tend to move between many machines and so all of my content is stored in the cloud (and cached locally, but that’s only a small subset of images).

Thanks! (and if it’s relevant, I’m a professional dev as my day job, so it doesn’t have to be an *easy* solution, just possible)

    2 replies

    Adobe Employee
    March 24, 2026

    We have a bug here that’s preventing us from copying the Alt Text and Extended Description fields when you import files to the Cloud. We’ll look into it.

    Community Manager
    March 21, 2026

    We don’t currently expose an API for this but agree it would be a useful addition.  Let me look into what it would take to do this in a secure way.

    -Peter

    DuncanmaAuthor
    Participant
    March 21, 2026

    Hey Peter, I have been able to fetch the alt-text data using the API (https://developer.adobe.com/lightroom/lightroom-api-docs/api/#tag/Assets/operation/getAsset)
     

          "dc": {

            "rights": "© Duncan Mackenzie",

            "title": "Squirrel on the Trail",

            "description": "Squirrel Caption"

          },

          "iptcCore": {

            "AltTextAccessibility": "Squirrel Alt-text",

            "ExtDescrAccessibility": "Extended Description"

          }

    (I put some fake values into an image to make it easier to match the data to the UX)

    So, the request would be to be able to do a PUT or PATCH with that same /payload/xmp/iptcCore element to update it (or the whole payload, and only modifying those, but it seems *safer* to require that the call only supply the elements that are changing

    Hope that helps 

    Community Manager
    March 23, 2026

    Agreed with your take here.  Will be looking into this.