P: Metadata conflicts: compare metadata for a photo and show the difference

[ZimFromIRK]

I use Lightroom Classic 13.0.1 on a Windows 11 desktop and sometimes I wind up with metadata conflicts for unknown reasons.

The only options I have are to choose whether I want metadata in the catalog or in the file to be used. I have no idea whether I made an update that didn't get written to the file, or if some other process on my computer changed the file.

We need a third option, "show metadata difference" that would show me which field(s) have actually changed so I can make an informed decision about whether the catalog or the image file is the most current.

[C.Cella]

In the meantime you can create a VC before performing "Reading Metadata" form the file and then compare the two using the "Compare Photo Edits" Plug-in by Jeffrey Friedl : http://regex.info/blog/lightroom-goodies/bag-o-goodies#compare-photo-edits

Metadata differences and edits differences will show up and you can decide which ones to use.

[johnrellis]

"sometimes I wind up with metadata conflicts for unknown reasons."

LR's metadata status has been buggy for many years. One cause seems to be when Adobe adds new Develop settings or changes the internal catalog representation of Develop settings.

So if @C.Cella's suggestion to use the Compare Photo Edits plugin doesn't illuminate what's happening, and if you're sure you haven't edited the files' metadata in an external app, use the Metadata browser's Metadata Status column to identify files whose metadata status is not Up To Date, select all of them, and do Metadata > Save Metadata To File.  That usually (but not always) updates the metadata status in LR.

[ZimFromIRK]

Thanks for the link. I've downloaded the plugin and will install soon.  I'll report back if I learn anything using the plugin.

[ZimFromIRK]

Overwriting the external metadata is pretty much what I've been doing.  New metadata added to lightroom that isn't present in the images makes a lot of sense. Actually, if this happens with NEF files that have sidecar files, I can copy the XMP file before overwriting it, and use windiff or winmerge to see what was changed.  It would be good if there was a tool that would create a sidecar XMP file from an image file, even for image files that don't normally have sidecar files -- as those XML-formatted files are pretty easy to compare.  I can't believe something like this doesn't already exist -- if not, maybe a post-retirement project.

[johnrellis]

"It would be good if there was a tool that would create a sidecar XMP file from an image file, even for image files that don't normally have sidecar files"

The free Exiftool utility can do that.

[C.Cella]

@ZimFromIRK

You can read metadata from file.

If you have history you can go back one step and see the edits before.

Or you can simply create a VC or a Snapshot before reading metadata so can always go back to them.

Only metadata, will be lost by reading the file.

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