P: Photos are marked for republish even though there is no change.

[Dr. Fred Mbogo]

I noticed after updating my new v10 converted catalog that LrC was acting slow in the Library module, so I disengaged the usual culprit for this, the "Automatically write changes into XMP" setting. Then to my dismay, I noticed that it proceeded to mark the majority of the photos in the current grid view as needing a metadata update, even though the catalog metadata was fully saved to XMP prior to the upgrade, as far as I was aware.

Then I paged down, and the pattern repeated: Lightroom scanned all the now-visible photos and found that almost all of them also needed to be updated on disk.

And I did it again. And again.

Eventually I wrote a script to send "Page Down" events to the program periodically to ensure that Lightroom looked at every photo in the catalog, then let it run overnight with the library filter set to "Metadata Status = Up to date", so that it would give me the list of photos that need no metadata update. The next morning, I scrolled the grid back up to the top and let it go again, to catch any photos it missed on the first pass.

In the end, it marked over four-fifths of my catalog as out of date. This beggars belief, since I normally keep "Automatically write changes into XMP" engaged.

Then I did an experiment: I ran exiftool on one of the photos marked as still needing an update, saving the result to a text file, told Lightroom to save the metadata (⌘-S) and ran exiftool on the result, saving the output to a different text file, and diffed the two outputs, and found only timestamp and program version differences!

Observe:

5c5< File Modification Date/Time     : 2020:10:23 18:31:53-06:00---> File Modification Date/Time     : 2020:10:25 10:46:00-06:007c7< File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2020:10:23 18:31:53-06:00---> File Inode Change Date/Time     : 2020:10:25 10:46:00-06:0026c26< Instance ID                     : xmp.iid:9acec219-b6a4-4918-a592-9fc6a0ab3486---> Instance ID                     : xmp.iid:b5e76784-9638-44a1-a8b6-4e17799d003f28c28< Metadata Date                   : 2020:10:23 18:31:53-06:00---> Metadata Date                   : 2020:10:25 10:46-06:0040,41c40,41< History Instance ID             : xmp.iid:eac2ee0b-0b2d-4143-8da1-cafb424d66cc, xmp.iid:9acec219-b6a4-4918-a592-9fc6a0ab3486< History When                    : 2014:04:27 20:29:30-06:00, 2020:10:23 18:31:53-06:00---> History Instance ID             : xmp.iid:eac2ee0b-0b2d-4143-8da1-cafb424d66cc, xmp.iid:b5e76784-9638-44a1-a8b6-4e17799d003f> History When                    : 2014:04:27 20:29:30-06:00, 2020:10:25 10:46-06:00

For that particular file, the "Metadata Date" inside Lightroom is in July of 2019!

You may then wonder why the file modification time in the diff isn't in 2019, but instead two days ago. I dug into a recent pre-upgrade backup of my photos, and indeed, the prior file's mtime was in 2019. So, not only did LrC v10 decide it needed to do a bogus update to the file's metadata, it touched the file prior to actually being told it was okay to do so!

This upgrade has entirely invalidated all of my photo backups. Everything has to be backed up again, all because LrC is being stupid about touching files unnecessarily.

Surely the only defensible case for updating the application version number in the file's XMP metadata is that I've changed the photo, so now the program is properly reporting the last application to update the metadata?

I see other posts in the forum here on related topics, such as complaints that publish services are forcing a re-publish of unchanged photos. I'm posting this because I think I've diagnosed this to a deeper level than most users.

[aliceinwl]

Re-rending the photos solved that porblem! But, now my catalog keeps getting corrupted for some reason: probably unrelated.

[Aaron Roberts]

Sounds like you may have bigger issues. The problem is, you shouldn't have to re-render anything. There should be a simple "flag" which indicates if a photo (regardless of its preview) has not been modified since the last time it was published.

That flag is broken and has been for years.. At this point it's just plain negligence on Adobe's part.

[e.j.v92227290]

Posted in "The Lightroom Queen" forum and now posting here.

I've been using Jeffrey Friedl's great "Folder-Publisher" add-in for years now, as it allows me to create an identical parallel folder structure with all my photo's exported as JPGs with all my edits applied.
There's one problem however which, as Jeffrey also told me, was raised for many years and several times already to Adobe, but seems to have remained unaddressed since the perpetual LR version era years back.
As I can't formulate it better than Jeffrey does in one of his blogs, here's his description: "Sometimes photos just spontaneously move from “Published” to “Modified Photos to Re-Publish”, regardless of the settings in “Metadata that Triggers a Republish” and regardless of what's actually been changed."
As you can imagine, this largely defeats the whole publishing purpose. I have 22K+ photos and if I make a few changes and want to update my JPG folders, instead of a quick publish, sometimes 800 extra pictures I never touched (but maybe viewed? I'm not entirely sure) are added. So now the publish process takes a much longer time (plus my system backups later include these uselessly updated photos as well).

Please Adobe, I'm seeing that many users have been reporting this for many years now. This completely defeats the who Publishing functionality. Can you please investigate, debug and fix this problem and make us all happy? 

[e.j.v92227290]

Note that rebuilding previews and then setting the entire collection as published might (or might not) work, in any case it will trigger all files to be backed-up again (and that's a few 100 Gb for me...). Maybe a possible temporary workaround but not the solution we need obviously 

[e.j.v92227290]

Adobe... are you reading posts in this forum? I'm thinking and hoping you do. Can you confirm that this bug is on your list of issues to be addressed please?

[johnrellis]

@e.j.v92227290, at the bottom of the top post you can see "BUG: Acknowledged". This indicates that Adobe has file the issue in their internal tracking system. Unfortunately, Adobe rarely says when they might fix an acknowledged issue.

[shaugsburg]

Among the other chrashing issues I have with LR13, it seems that every photo in all of my publish collections from every publish provider have been reset to "Modified to be re-published". I don't recall this ever happening before on an upgrade. I'm not looking forward to re-publishing well over a hundred collections of photos.

[DClark064]

The following describes what causes the problem and a work around.  https://www.alex-kunz.com/new-features-in-lightroom-classic-13/ 

[shaugsburg]

Thanks for the link and tip!

[johnrellis]

That link now returns 403 Forbidden.

[johnrellis]

This bug occurs with every update to LR that adds new Develop settings (as LR 13 does).

You can sometimes avoid republishing with this recipe for forcing LR to re-render the published images:

a. In the Publish Services panel, click the first collection and shift-click the last collection to select all the collections.

b. Select all the displayed photos and do Library > Previews > Discard 1:1 Previews and then Build 1:1 Previews. Let it complete overnight.

c. Discard 1:1 Previews.

d. Select each collection in turn, select all of its photos, right-click one photo and do Mark As Up-To-Date.

In the past several years, this sometimes worked, often not. Photos would soon get marked for republishing again.

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with this Bug:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-photos-are-marked-for-republish-even-though-...

[DClark064]

I just clicked it on two different computers and it loaded without issue.

[johnrellis]

It loads in my Firefox but not Chrome (Mac).

That solution requires rebuilding the preview cache for the entire catalog, whereas my variant only renders 1:1 previews for published photos.  Which one is faster will depend on multiple factors.

[DClark064]

Alex suggests "render new Standard previews, at least for all photos that are in Publish Collections".  It does not seem to be necessary to delete all the previews.  It also does not seem to be necessary to build 1:1 previews which take a lot longer.  Regardless, this bug is a PITA and Adobe should correct it.

[johnrellis]

"It does not seem to be necessary to delete all the previews."

His first step is to delete the preview cache: "delete Lightroom’s entire preview cache (the “<catalog name> Previews.lrdata” file or folder)". That deletes all the previews.

"It also does not seem to be necessary to build 1:1 previews which take a lot longer. "

If you have a catalog with 100,000 photos and 100 published photos, it is certainly faster to build 100 1:1 previews than 100,000 standard-sized previews.  On my 5K display, the standard-sized preview is almost as big as the 1:1 preview, so there's little difference.   As I said, which method is faster depends on many factors.

[alexskunz]

Hi John, I would perhaps add another step before your b) — tell LrC to discard all existing 1:1 previews first, and THEN let it re-render them? (to avoid that it will skip rendering existing current 1:1 previews, which it may or may not do, I don't know).

Thanks for your remarks that my approach is rather brutal. I've re-worded what I wrote a little bit to make it clear that this is crude and works for me (and some more explanations).

(last not least, sorry to hear that the article didn't load when using Chrome — that shouldn't happen! I had a few .htaccess rules to block very old browser versions because a lot of malicious bots use them, and I might have slightly overdone it, I guess... anyway, that's beyond the scope of this forum of course.)

[johnrellis]

"tell LrC to discard all existing 1:1 previews first, and THEN let it re-render them?"

I edited the steps to include that, thanks.

[Michael2988061052dd]

Sehr geehrtes Adobe Team,

Problem: im Veröffentlichsdienst bei Lightroom Classic stehen ständig Fotos auf "Erneut zu veröffentlichende geänderte Fotos" obwohl die Bilder im Katalog nicht geändert wurden, sondern nur z.B. mit einer größeren Ansicht (Lupe) betrachtet wurden. Dies macht es unorganisiert, da man später nicht mehr unterscheiden kann ob die Bilder nun wirklich aktualisiert und entsprechend neu hochgeladen werden müssen.

Lösungsvorschlag: Es wäre gut eine Auswahl treffen zu können welche Veränderungen am Bild Einfluss auf den Veröffentlichsdienst haben

Grüße

[GoldingD]

1. At a LrC upgrade, some data in the edits may be different compared to pre upgrade. Nothing you did, but the way it is reported in the database, the catalog. Can trigger this.

2. Any odd bit of metadata change, or issue can trigger this.

[johnrellis]

Google translation: "Dear Adobe team, Problem: in the publishing service in Lightroom Classic, photos are constantly listed as "changed photos to be republished" even though the images in the catalog have not been changed, but have only been viewed with a larger view (magnifying glass), for example. This makes it disorganized because later you can no longer distinguish whether the images actually need to be updated and re-uploaded accordingly.

Suggested solution: It would be good to be able to make a selection which changes to the image have an impact on the publishing service"

To build on GoldingD's reply, LR 13 changed the internal representation of develop settings stored in the catalog. But it updates the representations incrementally, as photos get re-rendered (such as when you view the photo at 100% or do an Export).  The change in the internal representation fools the publishing service into thinking the photo has changed, even though the Develop settings displayed to the user haven't changed at all and the visual appearance of the photo is identical.

This bug has been around for years and many have complained about it.

[johnrellis]

See here for one workaround that sometimes works, sometimes not:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-photos-are-marked-for-republish-even-though-...

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please merge with the existing bug:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-photos-are-marked-for-republish-even-though-...

[Schmidtze]

Hello,

I've been using Lightroom since version 1 and have never had such a bad update as I have now to version 13. Mind you, this is very subjective, of course it depends on what you use. I use VERY much the export via publishing services. It has ALWAYS been the case that many many image files have been suddenly marked as changed over and over again, but with nothing changed about them, no metadata, no development. I'm used to that, unfortunately. I actually hope for years that this will be fixed sometime.

But now it happens that already during an export the files are immediately marked as changed again. The progress bar during the export also jumps back and forth, sometimes wildly.

Many greetings
Friedemann

[GoldingD]

Apparently a bug under investigation.

Earlier replys to similar talked to how LrC upgrades can lead to some data fields being changed (remember the catalog gets upgraded) that can cause LrC to think an edit occurred, perhaps in metadata. But now, it looks like Adobe is going with a bug.

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-photos-are-marked-for-republish-even-though-...