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How to synch metadata updates between Photo Mechanic and LR

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 21, 2021
3 replies
4803 views

I use Photo Mechanic to ingest, select and manage metadata before editing in LR. During games, I don't have enough time to tag photos. I file low-res photos during the game that are suitable for social media, not high-res for other uses.

Once the game is over, I update the metadata, usually player names, in Photo Mechanic because it's faster and easier. The problem is that I can't get these updates syched up in LR. I get a message in LR that the meta data has been updated and only have two choices: overwrite the data with what's already in LR which means losing the "persons present"; or import from Photomechanic which undos all the editing I've done.

Is there some setting I'm missing between the two programs to make this work?

Thanks

This topic has been closed for replies.

Correct answer Grafenauer

@john beardsworth that is exactly right! It really is about the workflow needs. Pro sports folks just need it to be fast as their relevance is measured in milliseconds and they don't often need to reach back into older images so a catalog based system is not what they need for their main workflow. PM is really fast but it doesn't lend itself to a reflective workflow. Lightroom is very good at the reflective workflow thing. If you need some of both (fast at the ingest but reflective later on), the one thing to watch out for is that you need a clean handoff between the two workflows. You do not want to go back and forth between the two if you can avoid it as that creates headaches like described in this thread.

Thank you all for the interesting and informative discussion. I really do need the ability to go back into my collection of photos to find something long after the game/season is over.

If memory serves me, I believe that Photo Mechanic is working on this (or it may already be released). Will look into that too.

Thanks again for your insights. I'll consider this question answered.

F

Fabrizio_Boldoni6521

Participant

Hello all,

I always used to put metadata during my first selection of pictures on Photomechanic, then drag & drop the files into Lightroom classic, but from today I'm losing all the metadata I put when importing the pictures in Lightroom. I literally didn't change any settings in both softwares, only updated LrC to the latest version and I can't really understand what happened.

Can someone explain me what could be wrong with this? That would be really helpful.

john beardsworth

Community Expert

Both LR and PM use standard metadata and are designed to play well with other applications. A lot depends on the exact sequence of what you're doing, and I'm not totally clear from your description.

If you do something in LR such as face recognition, then something in PM, what you need to do is save your LR work before you switch over to PM. Then when you return to LR and read in the metadata added in PM, LR will read in its own metadata such as people and other editing, as well as stuff done in PM.

G

GrafenauerAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Here's the sequence:

Step 1: ingest photos using Photo Mechanic, select the few photos to be immediately filed without tagging individual players (just not enough time) and export to LF for editing and then export for filing with the client. These are web-resolution photos. I call these in-game images.

Step 2: After the game, review all the photos from the game, identify photos that will be filed with the client as High-Res images, including the previous in-game photos. Tag ALL the identified photos, including those that were filed as in-game images.

Step 3: Export ALL photos into LR for post-processing. The in-game photos are not re-exported to LR as I have the setting not to import apparent duplicates. So only the additional photos are added to LR.

Step 4: Edit everything for final filing. It's at this point that LR points out that the metadata has changed for those files that are the in-game files that now have the player tags added. I get a prompt that offers me two opions: Overwrite what Photo Mechanic has with what LR has, which means I lose the tag but keep the edits. The other choice is to import the new settings (the player tag) but I lose the edits.

Greedy me wants to keep the edits AND keep the updated metadata - the tags.

A colleague uses Capture One and apparently this is not an issue for him.

I've gone through the settings on both pieces of software and cannot find a setting that supports this. Perhaps LR can't do what Capture One does as it relates to this issue.

Thanks for any insights you, or others, can offer.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

If you want to keep Lightroom in your workflow, what you need to do is to after step 1 to write metadata to files from Lightroom to those few you imported to send to the client at web resolution. Then before step 4, make sure to from Lightroom to "read metadata from files". Lightroom will complain you might lose edits but they are actually already written into the files after step 1 and all that will happen is that the changed keywords will get added to the images that were involved in step 1.

Since you are not actually using Lightroom as a DAM but are actually using PM to do ingestion, on disk organization, and keywording I would question the value you are getting out of it and you might be far better off just using camera raw (call it from Bridge or from Photoshop). Camera Raw just uses the xmp metadata files to store edits contrary to Lightroom that stores the edits in its catalog file which is the fundamental cause of your issue. Lightroom Classic really is just camera raw with a DAM wrapped around it and a few bells and whistles added. If you're not using the DAM part to organize and keyword, and are really just using folder organization, there is not much point to Lightroom.

J

Jao vdL

Community Expert

No you're not missing anything. This is unfortunately not possible. The metadata you can write to disk from Lightroom is considered a backup. Only choice you have is to overwrite the settings as you found out. Lightroom Classic is unfortunately not really written to play well with other file organization programs. You probably want to use Bridge and Camera Raw instead to do the editing and ignore Lightroom. That will play well with metadata edits in PM and gives you the exact same editing tools.

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