Does LR Classic 13 support HEIC XMP metadata?

[ZimFromIRK]

In the Catalog Settings in Lightroom Classic 13, I see this:

No mention of HEIC in this list.  Is the XMP metadata only in the catalog?  I don't see any XMP sidecar files.

[johnrellis]

The label "Automatically write changes into XMP" is misleading in a couple ways.

"XMP" here refers to the XMP metadata standard, a general method for representing metadata, not to .xmp sidecars.

For most industry-standard file formats (HEIC, JPEG, TIFF, DNG, etc. but not proprietary raws), LR stores XMP metadata inside the file itself, rather than in .xmp sidecars. For proprietary raw formats, LR stores metadata in the .xmp sidecars (which follow the XMP industry standard).  

But that option also causes LR to write metadata from the catalog back to non-XMP fields, e.g. EXIF and IPTC fields in those file formats that support it (e.g. TIFF and JPEG).

[ZimFromIRK]

I figured that's what it meant -- I originally looked at this option hoping to find a way to use XMP sidecar files for DNG files for backup purposes.  The NEF and converted DNG files for the Nikon Z8 are 50MB each and with embedded XMP/metadata, every change adds that much to my backup but if I leave the the files as NEF, only the small XMP sidecar file changes. 

If I turn off "include develop settings", then I assume settings are only stored in the catalog, but for Crashplan cloud backups, I really want the develop settings to travel with the files.
I was hoping to be able to give a list of the filetypes that i want separate XMP files for.

[johnrellis]

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please move to Discussions.

[ZimFromIRK]

I purposely reported this as a bug because HEIC is not mentioned in the options dialog, but appears to be supported. Then again, DNG is NOT mentioned either.  Does this mean that unchecking the box still updates DNG files?
I would consider this lack of clarity as a bug.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

Not sure this rises to the level of a bug, but I've asked the team to review the wording. 

[johnrellis]

There are two separable issues:

1. The label "Automatically write changes into XMP" is not technically accurate. It would be more accurately written as, "Automatically write metadata changes to photo files or .xmp sidecars". 

The option controls whether metadata is written back to the photo files themselves (non-proprietary-raw formats, including HEIC, JPEG, TIFF, DNG) or to .xmp sidecars (for proprietary raw files).   When checked, the metadata is written back for all file formats; when unchecked, the metadata isn't written back.

The "XMP" here doesn't refer to sidecars, it refers to the industry XMP metadata standard for how metadata can be stored in any file format.  It's the use of "XMP" that's not technically accurate -- when the option is checked, metadata is also written to the EXIF and IPTC metadata sections (controlled by different standards) if the file format supports them.

The imprecision of the label has been noted many times here over the years. But you could file a feature request about it (LR wouldn't consider it a "bug", since the label was deliberately chosen by a product manager, not a programming mistake.)

2. Many people have asked for an option to always use .xmp sidecars for all file formats, not just proprietary raws. Adobe Camera Raw has such an option just for DNG files but not other formats.  There's a fairly popular, longstanding feature request for this:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-store-the-xmp-metadata-outside-dng-jpeg-etc...

[ZimFromIRK]

Thanks for explanation -- it pretty much confirmed how I understood it, but the confirmation is helpful and maybe it will also help someone else.