forum & Bridge compatibility

[robirdman1]

Photoshop cs6 would not recognize Nikon Z7 files, so I was forced to update to CC.  I had a metadata extractor that would would extract chosen fields to a text document that I could then tweak to import into my MSAccess database.  Now I find this only worked with CS6 and I don't want to manually enter thousands of data records.  I then wondered about Lightroom and installed the classic.  Imported one recent folder with 27 raw or mov files, and now what?  I see no metadata, It doesn't recognize all that has been already entered in Bridge?  Default is none. If I choose new, it looks like I have to reenter everything in blank fields, likewise with presets.  All my thousands of phylogenetic-organized folders with almost 200,000 files are supposed to be individually imported and treated thus.  I am clueless as too how this is useful and improving my workflow which has now come to a halt till I import data into Access again.

[johnrellis]

The most efficient way to troubleshoot this is to upload a one of the problem raws to Dropbox or similar and post the sharing link here. That will let us see precisely which metadata is in the file and how it is or is not displaying in LR.

[robirdman1]

Is this picture from Bridge useful ? I really don't know how to use LR.  If I add to  'my catalog' is it setting a bunch of new folders, when I already have where I know I want them already or where I would file the images, according to subject.

[Jao vdL]

If you ado catalog, it leaves the folders and files alone and imports them in place. It should read any xmp metadata files next to the raw file and give you all metadata.

That said, if you have a working workflow in Bridge why stop doing that? I doubt Lightroom is very amenable to the workflow you seem to have.

[robirdman1]

I was just seeing if LR had any metadata exporting capabilities, that I lost going from CS6 Bridge to CC.  I just want to restore the ability to not have to manually enter thousands of records with a dozen data fields to add to my Access database.

[johnrellis]

A Google search indicates there are Bridge scripts which will export metadata from one or more files in CSV (comma-separated-values) format: Prepression: Extracting Metadata to .CSV . I've never used these, but it seems to be a fairly common question in the Bridge community.

There is a plugin ListView that does the equivalent in LR. But if your only goal is to extract the metadata to a text file, you're probably better off staying with Bridge.

[robirdman1]

I saw that the Bridge script was by Paul Riggot, who was the very helpful creator of the script I  had in 2012.  I saw that this one had more fields and was 2016, but unfortunately it also went to CS6 , not CC.

the Barred Rock script mentions there says it works on CS3 and 4.

[Jao vdL]

I would use exiftool from the command line or a script by the way. Very

versatile. If you have xmp sidecar files for everything it might even be

easier to do that with a bit of programming as those are simple text files.

[johnrellis]

ExifTool has a steep learning curve, so a prepackaged script might be easier to use. But here's a thread for ExifTool that might get you started: Exporting Bridge metadata to Excel or CSV

[robirdman1]

I went to a reject file to see what would happen .  I needed to press the import and then it came in with all the metadata.  But now the disk shows only this reject folder.  I'm can't seem to get back to viewing the other folders on the disk, where all the other images on the disk are. I removed that, so its empty now.  How do I get back to the original directory tree?

[Jao vdL]

Important thing to realize is that Lightroom is NOT a file browser like Bridge. It only shows images that have been imported into it.