"Updating Develop Presets to XMP" every time Lightroom starts

[GonzaloGM14]

Hey guys, since Lightroom started using XMP for presets, every time it starts it converts my presets to XMP, taking a long time (sometimes half an hour because I added a lot of presets now) making it unusable in the meantime.

Any idea of why it would convert them every time it starts? Maybe some files permission issue or something? (like not deleting/moving the old ones so it then finds them again and converts them).

Thanks in advance.

Best regards, Gonzalo

[JohanElzenga]

It probably can’t convert some presets, so each time it starts it has to try it again. So check which old presets don’t show up and then try to find out why.

[GonzaloGM14]

The problem is that it seems to converts all of them successfully.

I looked into the presets folder and found several marked as "Locked" in Finder, so I recursively removed that flag for the whole Develop Presets folder using a Terminal comand, and I restarted Lightroom. Now I'm waiting until it finishes converting them and see if that solves it. Thanks for the answer, though, as it might be a possible solution in other cases

[JohanElzenga · Accepted solution]

Lightroom renames converted old presets by placing two tildes (~~) in front of the name. That tells it those presets are already converted. If the presets are locked, then that explains what you are seeing. Because they are locked they can’t be renamed, and so Lightroom thinks they are not converted the next time it starts.

[GonzaloGM14]

Yes, that was it! I restarted Lightroom and it worked.

I'm leaving the command in case someone else needs it:

chflags -R nouchg "/Users/<yourusername>/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Develop Presets" 

Make sure to replace <yourusername> with your username. In my case it was gonzalogm.

[marc_nesbru]

Hi guys,

I have the same issue than Gonzalo. Lightroom Classic CC (7.5) converts all my presets to XMP every time I open my lightroom catalog.

As mentioned above, I have checked the preset folders and I can see that all the presets have the extension .xmp.

The presets are not tags as locked and I can manually changed the name of the presets in Finder.

However, there are no tildes (~~) in front of the preset names.

Do you know how can fix this?

Thanks a lot.

Marc

[JohanElzenga]

You are probably looking in the wrong folder. You should be looking in the old 'Develop presets' folder, where the .lrtemplate presets are stored, not the new 'Settings' folder where the .xmp presets are stored. The .lrtemplate presets are the ones that get renamed with two tildes.

[marc_nesbru]

Hi,

Yes, I am suspected something is off there...

From your post above, I would have expected to find my presets here:

~/Lightroom Settings/Develop Presets/Lightroom Presets

or

~/Lightroom Settings/Develop Presets/User Presets

However, I have found all my presets located here:

~/Lightroom Settings/Settings

~/Lightroom Settings/Develop Presets/Lightroom Presets and ~/Lightroom Settings/Develop Presets/User Presets are both empty.

Would it be the problem?

Thanks a lot.

Marc

[marc_nesbru]

Sorry, I did not read carefully enough your post.

I found the .lrtemplate files and they seems to be all stored under Lightroom Settings folder  in various subfolder such as Filter presets, Label Sets, Filename Templates etc.

I don't have any .lrtemplate files with ~~ in front it. However, it seems I can overwrite their names.

Marc

[JohanElzenga]

Those are different presets. You have to look for the 'Develop presets' folder within that 'Lightroom Settings' folder. Those are the only presets that should be converted to .xmp and so should be renamed after that has been done successfully.

[marc_nesbru]

Right. I did look into the folder ~/Lightroom Settings/Develop Presets/ but I just see 2 subfolders Lightroom Presets and User Presets and those 2 subfolders are empty.

[JohanElzenga]

marc_nesbru  wrote

Right. I did look into the folder ~/Lightroom Settings/Develop Presets/ but I just see 2 subfolders Lightroom Presets and User Presets and those 2 subfolders are empty.

Did you perhaps check the option 'Store Presets with this Catalog' in the Lightroom Preferences? In that case the old develop presets are inside a 'Lightroom Settings' folder that is inside your catalog folder.

[marc_nesbru]

It seems I have fixed it by just moving all my presets (files with .xmp extensions) in the subfolders of ~/Lightroom Settings/Develop Presets/.

"Store Presets with this Catalog" was not checked but maybe I did check and uncheck it in the past..

Anyway, by moving the preset files into the ~/Lightroom Settings/Develop Presets/ subfolders, Lightroom is no longer converted the presets at every startup.

Thanks for your help.

[JohanElzenga]

And do you still see the presets in Lightroom? As explained, the presets that need to be converted are .lrtemplate presets. The converted ones are .xmp. If you move your converted .xmp presets into that old 'Develop presets' folder (that is what you just said), then I would expect that Lightroom can't find them anymore.

Could you do something else, please? Go to 'Help - System Info' and copy the first ten lines of that info. Post it here.

[Kiko_Steinhoff]

Was having the same problem. Solved it by realizing that some presets where stored in two different folders.

When you open Lightroom, go to Develop mode and right-click a preset. Choose to show it on finder. 

In my case, the folder showed all presets where already converted to .xmp (none show the ~~ though).

Then, I did search for the preset file name (not using its extension) and found out the preset was still stored in a different location with the extension .lrtemplate. All I did was delete all the presets in this folder. And everything was working normally after that.

[tenpintaker]

Kiko, I had the same problem.  Once I realised they were held in a different folder and followed your lead, all was ok.  Thanks.

Ian

[juliannel33651070]

That worked!! Was pretty quick.