P: Save Metadata To File doesn't change metadata status, Read Metadata From File doesn't always work

[andyptak]

Ever since upgrading to the latest version I've had Metadata conflicts - little exclamation mark in Grid view. I even deleted my catalog of more than 200k images and started again to no avail.  I also synched all of my folders and no difference.

When I click on the exclamation mark I get the message that says that metadata has been changed by another program and Lightroom, even when I have only used Lightroom. When I click to upate the metadata the exclamtion dissapears but comes back very quickly. I made a Quick Collection of all metadata conflict shots - over 6000 - and syched them. The number dropped by a third but then came back to the original total within minutes.

I have lost all of the displayed colored flags in Grid View but can still select various colors in the Metadata panel at the top and get the appropriate shots. When clicking on an individial cell in Grid View I get a thin colored line around the shot which then dissapears when I click on another shot. I get the correct color but no flag.

I have auto save xmp on. I'm also at my wits end. anyone have any ideas? Thanks

[johnrellis]

The bug report TomM linked to describes the same issue -- crop information isn't properly read by the Metadata > Read Metadata From File command.  The recipe for reproducing the bug doesn't involve NAS. 

Adobe acknowledged the bug on November 1, 2020, which means that it has been filed in their internal tracking system.  But that doesn't indicate when they'll prioritize a fix. They have their hands full with the performance/crashing issues and lots of other bugs also introduced in LR 10 -- a real mess.

[johnrellis]

Why conversations get merged:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-auto-import-to-folders-orga... 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

There may be a good reason for merging conversations, but in this instance it is extremely frustrating! I have been fighting with this icon/badge/whatever not being updated ever since LR 10x got updated. I am NOT using a NAS. It doesn't matter what changes I've made (or have not made). Some of the problem files are from years ago and have not been touched. I found them on one of my searches for unsaved metadata changes. Previously they had not been flagged by those searches. These files are on my INTERNAL hard drive, NOT a NAS. Sorry, but reading this topic has been a major exercise in frustration.

[Victoria Bampton LR Queen]

I get that it can be frustrating to see other people reporting the same issue, but merging conversations is a good thing because it combines all of the votes and conversation so the engineers can see all of the different reports in one place, so they can hopefully catch all of the different variations. I verified it without a NAS too (not remembering this thread existed), and uploaded a sample catalog to internal bug LRD-4205847 yesterday. 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

For me it is also only B&W images. I actually converted to color and the metadata saved without trouble. Also, the DNGs are updating according to finder, just LR doesn't recognize they have.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Note: This is a reproduceable bug. It seems to be present in v10x of LR Classic, but not in older v9x versions

ISSUE: Crop settings aren't maintained when IPTC metadata is updated in another program.

REPRODUCABLE STEPS:

• Open a JPG photo in LR Classic
• Crop, rotate, and apply a LR Develop preset
• Metadata\Save Metadata to File (this saves the settings within the JPG file itself)
• Open the photo in Photo Mechanic
• Enter text in an IPTC metadata field, such as a Caption or Keyword
• Returned to LR Classic and did a Metadata\Read Metadata from File to update the IPTC metadata
• The Caption/Keyword text updates appear

However, the crop setting is lost and reset to the 'As-shot' setting

Older LR Classic version works OK
This issue only happens in LR Classic v10. An Adobe tech support agent asked me to install an older v9.4 version of LR Classic, and the issue IS NOT present in that version. The crop settings are maintained when reading updated IPTC metadata.

[Bob Somrak]

*umbighouse 

Your issue seems similar to these.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Updates to Lightroom Classic and the Lightroom Ecosystem products for Desktop, Mobile and Web were released today and contain a fix for this issue.

Please refresh your Creative Cloud application and install your update when it becomes available. Thank you for your patience.

[Bob Somrak]

@Rikk 

There were two issues with the Save Metadata discussed in this thread.  The issue with B&W was resolved but the similar issue with Crop and Rotate is still a problem in 10.2.  

[Goreb]

Just checked out as well that the Crop and Rotate issue on the latest Lightroom Classic V10.2 still persist.

[johnrellis]

I observe the same as Robert Somrak: LR 10.2 fixes the problem with black & white but not crop angle. The bug recipe posted above still fails with crop angle:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-classic-save-metadata-to-fi... 

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Correct: The fix has been made for the BW issue but not the crop. That is filed on a different bug. Though it appears related it is a separate issue. 

[KathyEyster]

I upgraded to 10.2. In my smart collection that contains images with unsaved metadata I have 5 images, 4 TIFF and 1 PSD. All have the arrow indicating changes in Lightroom Classic that have not been saved. 1 image is originally a raw file (PSD), the others are scans (TIFF). Running both Save Metadata to file and Read Metadata from file produced no change in their metadata status. None of them have a b&w treatment. Three of the TIFF files have a crop applied. Other images that appear in the smart collection (mix of raw, jpg, tiff, psd) do save appropriately. But some like these files can linger for weeks or months and then one day the save or read "works." Apparently something is still not right even though this problem is listed as a fixed bug in the announcement.

[gegjr]

I asked a question about this issue a very long time ago. Much longer than 5 months ago. So long ago I don't remember exactly when and I don't know how to find it. I reported that even after correcting metadata update errors I kept seeing them on the same images and on old images I hadn't touched in years or months. But since I am not part of the royalty on this forum I was ignored and poo fooed. 

Does Adobe really expect that the average amateur home enthusiast  will have the time not to mention the skills to document and do extensive testing and research like building new catalogs and such to do their programmers jobs?

Adobe needs to take their average non-professional users seriously and find a better way to validate our complaints. After all we pay for the subscription too. Many of us have been using Lightroom for many, many years.

Sincerely, 

George E Givens, Jr.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

FYI, George, I looked back and do not find any posts from you on this subject, either as a comment, reply or origination of a post.  I do see you've made some 'private' posts along the way. Typically, those are not easily seen by staff and we are working to have the private checkbox disabled.  Make sure you don't check the private option if you want to be seen and responded to.  

Of course it is possible that I missed your post or that you posted under a different address than that which you posted here.  Rest assured - there is no royalty and no one is ignored or 'poo fooed' 

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

@Rikk What's the other bug filed for the crop issue? I posted details about a reproduceable bug with crops not being honored (and 'reset') when doing a Read Metadata command in LR Classic. It looks like it was merged into this thread- see the details below. 
- - -
Note: This comment was created from a merged conversation originally titled Lightroom Classic: Crop settings are reset when metadata is changed

[johnrellis]

A serious symptom of this bug: Converting a raw with a non-zero crop angle to DNG loses the crop.  To reproduce:

1. Crop a raw file with a non-zero crop angle.

2. Do Library > Convert Photo To DNG with these settings:

See here for the original report:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/lightroom-classic-10-3-removes-cropping-settings-wh...

[DanielUSA]

I just ran into these problems, and documented a variety of frustrations here: https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic/metadata-status-still-broken/m-p/12146062.

These metadata problems seem to be very serious indeed, and I do hope that the Lr team will prioritize them over any new features: being able to read and write image settings to files reliably seems to me the most essential property of Lr. Note also that there seem to be some serious catalog import bugs too, which I mention in one of my posts there (eg, collection custom order being broken by an import of a catalog that includes some of the photos in the collection but no collection of that name).

[cehilton]

this is what has worked for me  so far:

1. attempt Save Metadata to File.

2. if that doesn't work Read Metadata from File.  Sometimes that is sufficient.

3. if step 2 doesn't do it, Save Metadata to File again. 

So far this has worked for everything I've tried it on.

[DanielUSA]

WARNING -- DO NOT DO THIS!

As you'll see from John's explanation above, read from file has serious bugs. Contrary to expectation, save followed by read *can* change a file. I myself am still recovering from the incident I describe above (under a different username -- sorry, have separate work and personal accounts) and after spending many hours reconstructing from backups I still have many files corrupted and long develop histories lost.

[cehilton]

I don't know what's different about your situation but nothing I've read from John's posts apply to mine and I haven't had any problems.  I've spent quite a bit of time comparing current files to backups.

That said, given that John says Read Metadata from File is unsafe I'll probably quit using it and hope that Adobe doesn't take years to fix the problem.  Not holding my breath.

[DanielUSA]

By the way, regarding the read-metadata-from-file bug, I've used the following workarounds:

-- Most obviously, just restoring an earlier version of the Lr catalog from backup (although disconcertingly once I learned about this bug I've found a bunch of old photos that got corrupted because of it, too far back to recover).

-- When read-from-file damages metadata beyond develop settings, which it seems to have done to a bunch of my files (messing up capture time in particular): delete the xmp sidecar file and then read from file again, which seems to restore the metadata from the raw file successfully (so you lose any develop settings, but at least you get the camera metadata back). This might be reason alone to avoid DNGs until Adobe fixes the metadata read/write bugs.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I recently encountered this bug (save metadata to file not actually updating), and thankfully was able to get around it by enabling the "Automatically write change into XMP; once I enabled that LR seemed to update the XMP's correctly in the background.

Given this data point, I assume there is some difference in functionality internally between manually saving metadata vs the automatic feature.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Starting with LR Classic v10.2, the Read Metadata from file option is no longer finding the crop info from the XMP metadata section. The same issue exists with the v10.3 update.  If the file has a crop during the initial Import, then the crop will be found and applied to the image.  If the crop is added by another application after the initial Import, then you used to be able to use the Read the Metadata from file option and the crop would then be applied to the image. Star ratings, color labels and keywords are all updated when using the Read Metadata from file option, but not the crop.  The only current work around is to remove the file from the catalog and then re-import the image. This problem is in both the Mac and Windows versions of Lightroom Classic.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

"If the crop is added by another application after the initial Import,"  It would be helpful for reproducing this issue if you could include an example application or two that causes this behavior.