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Scanning to Lightroom

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
June 29, 2022
4 replies
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Lightroom 11.4

Mac Monterey

I have spent the last two year (thank you COVID) scanning photos with image capture into Bridge to organize by date, add keywords, etc. When I attempted to add to Lightroom Classic I lost all metadata. When I called adobe they suggested importing to new catalog which I did but then I had the metadata but not my Collections. I recreated my original Lightroom Catalog from a back up. This time I used Bridge to drag and drop to the New Catalog. For a moment the file name, etc shows but then it goes to a generic file name. It seems like an evil trick. I've researched & copied conversations from the adobe website from Conrad C and Johnn Elzenga on the subject but can't seem to sort this out. Help Please. and thank you

Cross-app workflows

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Rob_Cullen

Community Expert

Why don't you Scan and Auto-Import directly to the LrC catalog? Then add all metadata in LrC. (Bridge is not needed!)

Set the scanner to 'save' files to the LrC "Watched" folder, and the scans will automatically be moved to the "Destination" folder already indexed in the Catalog.

Regards. My System: Windows-11, Lightroom-Classic 15.1.1, Photoshop 27.3.1, ACR 18.1.1, Lightroom 9.0, Lr-iOS 10.4.0, Bridge 16.0.2 .

Conrad_C

Community Expert

I agree in that I also do what you suggest and what JimHess does: Have the scanning software dump all the scans into a folder that is designated as the Auto-Import watched folder in Lightroom Classic. The original poster should know, if they don’t already, that this is definitely the way with the least steps. Just scan, then sit back and watch the saved scans appear in the catalog on their own.

But I also think the workflow of working in Bridge and importing into Lightroom Classic is still worth troubleshooting, because it should work without any special adjustments. Maybe the original poster has special requirements like scanning and keywording on a different conputer than the one where they will be organized/archived.

Conrad_C

Community Expert

I do a lot of scanning and I’m trying to figure out where this might break down. Because when I add keywords to a scanned TIFF image in Bridge, I import it into Lightroom Classic and the keywords are already there. Going in that direction, it should “just work.”

That’s how it always seemed to work for me in the past, and that’s consistent with my understanding of how Bridge adds keywords: When you enter keywords in Bridge and commit them, Bridge always immediately writes the keywords to the file in standard IPTC format. If it it’s a TIFF or JPEG (I assume one of those is your scan format), Bridge writes the keywords directly into the file itself. (For camera raw files it writes keywords to a sidecar file.) Therefore, any keywords entered in Bridge should be readable by any other application that reads IPTC keywords. That is the first thing we want to check: Are the keywords actually in the scanned images?

The way to verify that is to take any scan that you are sure you entered keywords into, and open it in other applications that can display keywords. I just did this with a TIFF scan I have. I added two keywords, and then I viewed it in the following applications in macOS 12.4 Monterey (although this has been true for many versions and years):

• Lightroom Classic (look in Metadata panel)

• Photoshop (look in File > File Info)

• Affinity Photo (look in Metadata panel, IPTC)

• Apple Preview (look in Tools > Show Inspector, click More Info tab, click IPTC tab)

• macOS Finder (look in File > Get Info, expand More Info section). That’s right, for non-raw files you can check for keywords directly on the Mac desktop, with no applications open.

The keywords should appear in all of those. macOS Finder example is shown below.

What happens when you look at your scans in applications other than Bridge and Lightroom? Are the keywords shown there?

If the keywords are shown, Lightroom Classic should have added them on import.

If the keywords are not visible in other applications, that suggest for some reason the keywords are not actually in the files.

If neither of those happened, we would want to troubleshoot that.

If the keywords were added in Bridge after already importing the files into Lightroom Classic, then Lightroom Classic must be told to re-read the files by choosing Metadata > Read Metadata from File when the files are selected.

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

There is another possible explanation why keywords do not show in Lightroom Classic: if the user applies a metadata preset on import, that preset might delete any keywords that are in XMP if it has a checked keyword field (but no keywords of its own). A pretty common mistake.

-- Johan W. Elzenga

JohanElzenga

Community Expert

Lightroom can read metadata you added in Bridge, but you will have to write these metadata to the files before you import them in Lightroom, or read them from the files once they are in Lightroom. https://helpx.adobe.com/bridge/using/metadata-adobe-bridge.html

-- Johan W. Elzenga

JP Hess

Inspiring

I have done considerable scanning, but have never involved Adobe products in the scanning process at all. Keywords added in Bridge will not carry over into Lightroom. They have to be added in the catalog. I do my scanning with a third party application called Vue Scan and then import directly into Lightroom. I then add keywords and do all editing and add other metadata in Lightroom. It makes for a much simpler scanning workflow, in my opinion.

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