Copying ratings (etc.) from Lightroom to LrC using Find Duplicates plug-in

[robg6276932]

Using Find Duplicates plug-in to copy ratings set in (mobile) Lightroom to Lightroom Classic.

When on a trip, I copy each day’s photos from my SD card to Lightroom on my iPad. I then make a quick pass through that day’s photos in Lightroom, assigning star ratings to the photos that I like.

When I get home, I import all the photos on the SD card. I do that rather than copying them from the All Synced Photographs folder for the following reasons:

• To guard against having accidentally skipped some photos from the SD card when loading them into Lightroom,
• To get my video files as well because these don’t appear in “All Synced Photos” even though they are in Lightroom, and
• To eliminate the file name changes that have been made to the files in “All Synced Photos”. E.g., a file named P123456.RW2 will have its name changed to P123456_RW2.raw. (Maybe there is a way to prevent this, but I have not found it.)

But now I have a problem because the star ratings are currently only on the photos in “All Synced Photos” and not on the files I just imported from the SD card.

Here is how I used the Find Duplicates plug-in (https://www.lightroom-plugins.com/DupesIndex.php) to copy all the star ratings. The steps below assume you have installed the plug-in.

1. Click on “All Synced Photographs” and then filter on Attribute and set the Rating filter to “= *”.
2. Use Ctrl-A to select all one-star photos.
3. Choose Plug-in Extras from the Library menu, and then choose “Find Duplicates 2”.
4. In the Find Duplicates pop-up control panel, choose “For Selected” in Search.  Click on appropriate fields to be used for the matching algorithm. For this, I used Date/Time, Lens, Focal Length, and Duration.  Verify that the settings look like this and that the photo count (e.g., 362) matches the number of photos found by the filter.
5. Then click OK. Ideally, when the duplicate search finishes, the number of duplicates found will be exactly twice the number of photos that were being matched. If that relationship does not hold, you will need to check the photos that were matched and take corrective action. For example, if you got more than twice you either have some of the photos already in other folders in Lightroom or your matching criteria need to be strengthened. If the number of duplicates is less than twice, then I have no suggestion as to what might have caused that, but obviously you need to resolve it before proceeding.
6. Click on the “All Duplicates” collection that was created by the plug-in. It should contain the duplicates you just found, e.g., twice the number of photos after you filtered on one star (e.g., 724 in the example above).
7. Type Ctrl-A to select all of them.
8. Type 1 to assign them all a one-star rating.
9. Repeat the above for each rating: 2-, 3-, 4-, or 5-star that you used in Lightroom. (Important – do it separately for each number of stars!) If you also used other attributes like flags or colors in Lightroom you can copy them the same way.

[Rob_Cullen]

@robg6276932   To me, even your explanation in the post seems complicated, and unnecessary.

This is what I can do (tested just now)-

1) Photos taken on iPhone Lightroom-mobile

2) and star rated in Lightroom-Desktop (5,2,1), as could be done in my iPhone.

3) the ratings automatically update on the photos synced to the LrC Catalog.

Nothing more I need to do!

[robg6276932]

Hi Rob,

You missed the point of what I did which is that I don't permanently want the photos originally added to Lightroom for the three reasons listed in my original post.

If that doesn't matter to you, then you don't need to use my procedure.

[Rob_Cullen]

Maybe I did miss the point, if you would set out the three reasons again.

For this one-"I don't permanently want the photos originally added to Lightroom"-

Simply delete from the 'All Synced Photographs' list once you know they have downloaded (fully synced).  The files that download will remain (not be deleted!) in the LrC catalog folder that you specified in LrC Preferences [Lightroom Sync] tab.

So add step 4) to my post above-

4) Delete unwanted files in Lightroom from the 'All Synced Photographs' list.

Video files are a separate issue- and I suggest only importing them to the Home LrC Catalog.