Incorrect Cropping When Syncing Manually Rotated Photos

[Anonimowy28454874im1b]

Hello, I have a problem in Lightroom Classic - I have a lot of photos that require identical cropping. My camera spontaneously rotates some photos and I have to rotate them manually in the program. But if I set the cropping options on the manually rotated photo and pass the settings to the other photos with the auto-sync function, the cropping is correct only on the manually rotated photos - those photos that were not manually rotated have the wrong cropping (like the cropping is rotated to the original orientation of the manually rotated photos).

[johnrellis]

I'm not observing that problem.  While I've filed bug reports on other issues with photo orientation, I haven't see this problem before. The most efficient way to troubleshoot this is to upload one of the camera-rotated photos and one of the manually rotated photos to Wetransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive or similar free service and post the sharing link here.

[Anonimowy28454874im1b]

If I rotate the photo, save it and import it back then this error is not there. It appears for me during one “session”, that is, when I rotate some photos from the import and then immediately crop and automatically pass the crop to other photos with the auto-sync function (if the main photo is unrotated then the correct crop will be on the unrotated ones and the vice versa on the rotated ones)

[Aleke]

Hi @Anonimowy28454874im1b! 👋 Welcome to the community! 

Could you please share a screen recording of your workflow along with some sample files, as John mentioned earlier? It would be super helpful for us to troubleshoot. Thank you so much!

Alek

[Anonimowy28454874im1b]

Okay, I'll make a video today of what it looks like with sample files attached.

[Anonimowy28454874im1b]

Video and sample files:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1stvEF_QbNt5SVqR9Ydool5ZUJvW6sPEY?usp=sharing

[johnrellis]

Your screen recording clarifies what's happening: In LR, you've rotated Test2.png. But that rotation is stored only in the LR catalog. When you remove Test2.png from the catalog, the develop setting representing the rotation is discarded. When you then examine the file Test2.png using Windows File Explorer and Windows Photos, they're displaying the original file Test2.png, without any rotation applied. 

Next, when you rotate Test2.png in Windows Photos, it updates the file with the newly rotated image. When you import it into LR again, LR sees the rotation just applied.

In general, when you apply a develop setting to a photo in LR, the effect of that setting is stored only in the LR catalog. For apps to see the effect of the setting, you need to export the photo from LR, and the effect will be visible in the exported photo.

[Anonimowy28454874im1b]

I know that the rotation will only be visible after exporting but I am encountering another problem. For example, I have 3 files (1.png etc) if I rotate the 2.png file in LR and apply cropping on the 1.png file and pass the settings to the other files via auto-sync then the cropping in the rotated image is wrong (this is shown by the two colored bars on either side of the file from my link and in the video). If I rotate the file in the Windows Image Viewer before importing, then all the files are well cropped.

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

My apologies, I was getting confused trying to match your words here with the video.

You're tripping over a longstanding bug, where LR doesn't correctly copy crops and local adjustments between photos with different orientations:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-correct-copying-of-crops-and-local-adjustme...

At various times, Adobe has called this behavior "as designed" (not a bug):

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-ideas/p-local-adjustments-and-crops-don-t-copy-or-w... 

and sometimes acknowledged it as a bug, though incorrectly marking the bug as fixed:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-bugs/p-copy-sync-crop-and-spot-removal-wrong-result...

After many years of no change in the status, I'm very doubtful the bug will ever be fixed.

There are two known workarounds:

1. Set the option Catalog Settings > Metadata > Automatically Write Changes Into XMP before copying/syncing crops. I've attached a screen recording demonstrating that with your sample pics.

2. Use the Copy Settings plugin.

[Anonimowy28454874im1b]

Thank you very much, you make my work much easier.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

In Grid View do you see an " ! " in the corner of the image indicating the Metadata has changed on disk? 

[Anonimowy28454874im1b]

No, I don't see any exclamation mark.