P: Watermark omitted from embedded thumbnails of exported JPEGs

[johnrellis]

When you export a JPEG with a watermark, the thumbnail embedded in the JPEG doesn't contain the watermark. This causes the Windows 8.1 File Explorer to show thumbnails of the exported pics without a watermark, confusing users who are checking to ensure their pics were properly marked. (It appears that the OS X 10.10 Finder doesn't use the embedded thumbnails, so watermarks show up in Finder thumbnails.)To reproduce, export a JPEG with a watermark, using these export options: Image Format: JPEG, Quality: 60, Include: All Metadata, Watermark with PNG watermark. Open Windows 8.1 File Explorer on the containing folder and do View > Extra Large Icons to view the folder's files as thumbnails. Note that the thumbnail of the exported pic doesn't show a watermark. Use Exiftool to extract the embedded thumbnail:

exiftool -b -thumbnailimage myfile.jpg > thumbnail.jpg

The extracted "thumbnail.jpg" is missing the watermark. Setting Limit File Size To: 100,000K (100 MB) avoids embedding a thumbnail and thus avoids this problem. (Julie Kmoch pointed out that setting a limit uses a different code path in LR.)See this thread for a user's report: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1882527 Some but not all of the problems reported in this thread are possibly caused by this bug: http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh... on LR CC 2015.1 / Windows 8.1.

[johnrellis]

Two more users with the problem, one two years ago: https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1207858

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Wow, adding any file size limit indeed makes the watermark re-appear in the thumbnail again! This was the only setting that was different from my previous installations. As a coincidence, I was editing some vacation photos and to my surprise, suddenly the watermark started re-appearing again last night!

I then read your post. Thank you for confirming this workaround. I have not tried the other suggestions above as I don't have time to troubleshoot and bug-test Adobe's software for them. As a long-time PC user, I find most Adobe software (including Acrobat and PhotoShop) all to be extremely difficult to use, counter-intuitive, and filled with bugs. I have no idea why their software is so popular.

This is hardly a solution and perhaps Adobe will get around to fixing this bug which apparently has been around for 2-3 years. Nah, I guess they'll just keep releasing updates with the same old bugs.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I STILL have this problem with LR 6.0 and Windows 10 Pro.  So FRUSTRATING!

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

Yep.  And my Galaxy S5 Android 6.0.1 phone still puts 4 carriage returns before my signature every freaking time I send an email, after 3-4 years of "updates" from 4.x to 5.x and now 6.x. Amazing how vendors ignore such blatant, huge bugs like this for years.

[axmelissarios1]

Hi all,

This issue should be fixed in today's Lightroom Classic CC 7.2 version. Please update your application and let us know if you still see this issue!

Lightroom Classic CC 7.2 is now available!

Thanks,
Melissa

[johnrellis]

I just verified that LR 7.2 avoids the issue by not embedding a thumbnail at all. This is better than the previous behavior, where the embedded thumbnail didn't contain the watermark, since users will no longer get confused by file browsers that used the thumbnails when present.  But it would have been better to compute a correct thumbnail, allowing file browsers to avoid recomputing thumbnails.

[FeedbackCommunityMember]

I'm using Lightroom Classic CC on a MacBook Pro, macOS Mojave Version 10.14.6, Lightroom Classic CC version 8.4. Suddenly I can no longer see the image watermark when exporting to .jpg files. I do have the watermark feature checked

[johnrellis]

An update: Somewhere between LR 7.2 and LR 13.3.1, LR started again including thumbnails in exported JPEGs. But unlike pre-7.2, LR correctly includes watermarks on the thumbnails:

https://www.lightroomqueen.com/community/threads/does-lr-embed-thumbnail-of-original-file-when-expor...