P: Photos incorrectly considered as "changed" by republishing and smart collections

[ianmao]

[Update from John R. Ellis:

At least some instances of this bug are caused by the new develop settings added by CC 2015.6 for the Guided Upright tool (2015.6 was released 6/8/2016). When 2015.6 or later first renders a photo at 1:1 zoom that had been imported by 2015.5 or earlier, it adds those develop settings before rendering. Then it compares those develop settings with the old, notices they are different, and incorrectly marks the photo to be republished.

Here's how to work around this instance of the problem: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/modified-to-republish-problem?topic-reply-lis...

See here for a detailed recipe to reproduce the bug, along with an analysis of the problem and suggested fix: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/modified-to-republish-problem?topic-reply-lis... ]
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Sometime photos in my published collections began to randomly mark themselves as modified to republish.   Photos I haven't touched in years, in galleries I haven't recently changed, all of a sudden appear under 'Modified Photos to Re-Publish.'   If I even scroll through a collection, dozens of the images begin to jump up to 'Modified Photos'. I can select the photos and send them back to 'Published' with 'Mark as Up-to-Date,' but then more immediately jump up to Modified.

[johnrellis]

"So I guess that something happened during the past week that caused a lot of images to be incorporated. This event probably spanned over several days, otherwise I wouldn't still have thousands of images in the collection."

I repeated the recipe I posted earlier for showing that the introduction of Guided Upright in CC 2015.6 caused photos to be marked for republishing spuriously: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/modified-to-republish-problem?topic-reply-lis... In that situation, LR is adding new develop settings to the photo for Guided Upright whenever you first zoom in on the photo, fooling publish services into thinking the photo has changed.

But the "touchTime" and "touchCount" of these photos isn't changing when that happens.  So I don't think Guided Upright / Zoom is the cause of spurious changes to Edit Date as viewed by smart collections.

[Samoreen]

Got it! Actually, it's a side effect of the bug reported here which is lasting since version 1 :

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/wrong-timestamp-stored-in-lightroom-catalog-c...

I just remembered that I have been recently hit by this bug and I found myself with a lot of images for which the metadata status was wrong. So I used the write/read XMP method to fix the problem. Unfortunately, LR considers this as an editing operation although no setting has been actually changed.

Conclusion : bugs that are not timely handled are never fixed by themselves. They just generate more trouble with time. We have now version 6 and the time stamp bug is here since version 1. Time to do something.

[johnrellis]

Very much agreed.

[magw77]

Thank you soooo much! This seems to have fixed the issue for me. I've been putting up with it for months (I too was experiencing the issue when simply scrolling through grid view), but since following your nice clear instructions a couple of weeks ago, I haven't had any images mysteriously marked to republish. Such a relief!

[bramnani]

Thanks for reporting the issue. We are looking into it.

[Califdan2]

I'm having same problem.  But, just to throw a wrench into this issue, For me it seems to have started when I started putting images into a dumb collections that are synced to LR Mobile.   I DO NOT modify images on any mobile device, only on my desktop.  But I do use LR Mobile on my smart phone to view images.   Could the sync process to LR Mobile or the fact that I view synced images on a mobile device trigger the "modified to republish"  in Publish Services that those images also appear in?

[Rick Spaulding -]

As usual, you, our users, have done a fantastic job of addressing this issue and bringing it to our attention. 

Due to it’s obscure nature and that a solid workaround has been discovered we will not be expending any time or resources to fix it. It will only affect those users who are planning to migrate from a version <6.6 to a version >= 6.6 so that number is extremely small. 

Huge thanks to all those who helped sleuth this out and especially to John and Martin. You guys are amazing! 

And John, thank you very much for writing such clear, concise instructions for the workarounds.

Great work!

[Samoreen]

> Due to it’s obscure nature and that a solid workaround...

I beg your pardon ? How you dare writing this ? I have spent hours investigating this bug and I have clearly explained what was wrong in the database. You have the necessary information to definitively fix this issue. If the Adobe developers are not able to correct this problem with all the information given here, they must return to school or look for another kind of job. I'm afraid, the real cause is : "We don't care. Pay your subscription and shut up.".

The write/read metadata trick is not a solid workaround because the problem comes back anyway.

This post is pure provocation. Really. I have never seen so much arrogance.

[Samoreen]

> I have never seen so much arrogance.

Wrong! At IBM, just before their fall.

[Samoreen]

Look again at this thread

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/wrong-timestamp-stored-in-lightroom-catalog-c...

Both problems are related and the bug described there is still not fixed AFAIK. As long as is is not, all related problems are not fixed either.

[weinelm]

I'm absolutely disgusted by Adobe's response to this issue. We are not asking for a favour. We are paying customers.

Unfortunately many people foretold that the subscription model would lead to this kind of behaviour. It seems they were right.

[johnrellis]

There might be a new instance of this bug in LR 7.0.1 caused by the introduction of the Range Mask develop setting.  See this user's report of spurious republishing for SmugMug: 
https://forums.adobe.com/message/10026416#10026416

I've confirmed that after upgrading from LR 6 to LR 7, LR adds the develop setting PaintBasedCorrections.CorrectionRangeMask on the fly as you access photos in your catalog.  This could be triggering the spurious republishing, just as the introduction of the Guided Upgright Tool did in 2015.6.

[APImagery]

I am also having this issue with my catalog over 4500 published images and a catalog of 200K photos. A "work-around" is not what I'm looking for from a company like this. A true FIX should be made.

[Bob Somrak]

EDIT: Updated link as old link was merged.  

Sounds like there is a new issue related to this thread possibly caused by the database updating for the new Color Grading and is the same scenario as what was happening with Guided Upright.  See here

https://feedback.photoshop.com/conversations/lightroom-classic/lightroom-classic-10-marks-photos-as-...

[Bob Somrak]

Considering that this seems to have happened 3 times now with 3 separate database updates I don't think it should be considered an "obscure incident" and will probably happen with more database updates.

Guided Upright

Range Mask

Probably Color Grading as shown in the above link.

[johnrellis]

"Considering that this seems to have happened 3 times now with 3 separate database updates I don't think it should be considered an "obscure incident" and will probably happen with more database updates."

I agree. Either there isn't an internal mechanism for handling the addition of develop settings properly, or more recent engineering teams don't know how to use it.