P: Save Metadata To File doesn't always set metadata status to Up To Date

@gyaku_zuki: "I would much rather have the option to retain the Denoise / AI information ONLY in the XMP sidecar, and not in the catalog, for this reason alone. I don't see why it needs to be retained in triplicate."

I believe it's an implementation flaw. The whole point of introducing the .lrcat-data file was to move voluminous develop settings out of the main catalog .lrcat database. 

Yeah, I encountered the Denoise situation last night myself. I can live with the additional space used, but the impact on catalog bootup and backup times from the change to Denoise is insane. I would much rather have the option to retain the Denoise / AI information ONLY in the XMP sidecar, and not in the catalog, for this reason alone. I don't see why it needs to be retained in triplicate.

I'm using Lightroom Classic 14.5.

I have a catalogue with around 15000 photos. There are thousands of photos that Lightroom Classic thinks have changed metadata. I do not have 'automatically write XMP changes' enabled.

For these photos, I have tried manually saving the changes using "Metadata > Save metadata to file" but it immediately changes from 'up to date' for a split second, back to 'has been changed' no matter how many times I try.

I can verify, though, using Explorer, that the XMP file has been updated, from the modified timestamp. So it is writing the file, but then immediately seems to think it isn't up to date.

I've tried restarting, optimising catalogue, editing the develop settings of the file. It doesn't help. It also doesn't affect all files. Some seem to be just fine.

It's not a dealbreaker but it is very irritating as I like to ensure my metadata is up-to-date, and it makes checking the metadata status unreliable.

I was having a similar problem with my DNG image files in one particular folder and, despite spending a lot of time trying to fix this, was unable to find a solution. However, I finally tried using Bridge to open these files and, whatever it did, the problem disappeared straightaway.

13.4 is working for me now

Update: been playing around with different combinations of actions (i.e., adding a keyword, removing a keyword, changing the spelling of the keyword, exporting as a catalog, opening it stand-alone, and re-importing back to main, force-saving metadata, allowing auto-save to do it, etc...) so I can't say which of these worked - but - it may be as simple as reading the metadata from the file, and then writing it back to the same file. 

I was fortunate in that I only had 1 file but, with that, I can't do further testing to confirm which steps worked. 

Hope this helps.

I'm on 13.4, and can confirm the issue is NOT fixed. 

on 1st of June 

Customer care about this issue said: "(...)

For about 10% of my photos, the metadata status in Lightroom always immediately jumps back to "changed", even if I have just saved it and no other programme is open.

Together with the "Automatically save changes to XMP" setting, this causes an infinite save loop, which has an extreme impact on Lightroom's performance.

What could be the cause of this? Any idea?