P: Store the xmp metadata outside DNG, jpeg etc file to be backup efficient

I too would like the option to use .xmp sidecars with all photos, raw and non-raw. I backup the catalogs regularly. But backup procedures can fail (more often than you think), and I like having the sidecars as a secondary backup. Also, about once a year I accidentally delete a photo from disk, and the sidecar makes it more likely I'll be able to recover the most recent edits and metadata changes.

It was suggested that I bring this discussion over here from another forum, so I apologize if you've seen this before.

I have used XMP files since the very beginning of Lightroom. It's a handy way of having an "instant backup" of changes just in case something ever happens to my Lightroom Catalog.  I love the safety net that XMP files give me.

A year and a half ago (after 15 years with Canon) I switched to the Sony a7iii.  The biggest downside to that is that Sony's ARW files are 47mb each.  But if I use the Adobe DNG Converter, I can losslessly compress them down to just 27mb each.  As I shoot thousands upon thousands of images each month, that 20mb per image savings is huge.  Especially when you take into account backups.  

However, there is one big thing I hate about using DNG files.  And that is that every time I make a change in Lightroom (change a star rating, adjust exposure, crop, etc) that 27mb DNG file needs to be backed up.  AGAIN.  Because unlike my Canon raw files, with XMP sidecar files, the DNG files are written back to whenever I make any changes.  

Is there any way to change Lightroom to write to a tiny XMP file every time I make a change, rather than modifying my 27mb DNG files?  I would much rather backup and rebackup tiny little XMP files.  It makes no sense to have to backup an entire 27mb file just because a few bytes inside of it have changed.  And it costs me money (I have to pay extra to Internet provider as I go over their imposed limits). 

For a real world example, let's say I shoot 64GB worth of files for a wedding.  It backs up 64GB worth of files right after I get home and import the files into my system.  It'll be a few weeks before I get to the wedding, but when I do, I'm going to rate all of the images.  Now they all get backed up again (that's an extra 64GB needlessly being backed up).  I probably won't finish all of my edits in one day, so the next day as I continue editing... any remaining files that get changed will be backed up again.  And again.  And again, for as long as I keep making changes inside of Lightroom.  See how this is suboptimal?  Certainly it's not a lot of money, but it all adds up and is costing me extra for my Internet usage because it is metered.  Whereas if it was using XMP files, then only tiny (what, 10K?) files change as I make my LR edits and that is all that has to be backed up, with XMP files the much larger raw files remain unchanged.

So for me ... DNG storing internally any changes is expensive.  I would love to have an XMP option if it were available.  It would reduce how often my local drives get hit with backups as well as the my internet cost for backing them up. 

I like that I can set LR (Classic CC 2019 for Mac) to automatically write changes made on raw files in LR or CR (Camera Raw) to the xmp files. What I don't like is if I check that preference, LR also writes any changes made to jpeg files- like ratings changes or flags. It would be great if LR had a few more options, such as don't write changes to PSD, TIFF or JPG files, but instead keeps those internal in the LR database. No reason to rewrite a jpeg, and change its modification date just because I added a star!

And speaking of suggestions, it would be great if I could sort a jpeg by its creation date, not its modification date, which keeps changing (see above).

Thanks.

I agree that this is a critical issue for keeping backup simple, but there is another issue. When one makes changes to an original image file, there is a small possibility of corrupting that file. While it has never happened to me with image files, it has happened to me with audio files.

In addition, if, at the file-system level, we create file checksums to check for random changes (file fixity), changing the metadata within that file will, rightfully, change the checksum. While there are audio solutions that only generate checksums for the audio chunk within the WAV file, these have so far proven to be non-robust solutions. I am unaware of that utility for TIF files.

I am spoiled as most of my new files are NEF files (Nikon Camera Raw) so these have the XMP side cars. I am not pleased that I don't have the option of having XMP side cars for my 50,000 TIF images made mostly with my Nikon Coolscan 5000ED.

I did find the ability to turn off the automatic following of the XMP data within the TIF files within Camera RAW, so my original complaint about this has been solved, but the ability to maintain fixity confidence while using the TIF files is a major frustration.

Just as an aside, the volume of backup is actually somewhat minimized by RSYNC which does do partial file backups and that function is used within Dropbox, as I understand it--I don't know about the other cloud storage providers, but even with that said, the fixity monitoring issue remains.

Thanks!

Cheers,

Richard

While I agree it's unlikely Adobe will ever change this, allowing sidecars for non-raw files while maintaining backward compatibility is quite straightforward.  

Given a file "f.ext", if the file is raw, its sidecar continues to be named "f.xmp", whereas if it's not raw, the sidecar is named "f.ext.xmp".   There would be two additional options in Catalog Settings > Metadata:

[] Write metatadata for non-raw photos into the file
[] Write metadata for non-raw photos to .xmp sidecars

(The careful reader will wonder what happens when there are two raws in a folder with the same basename, e.g. "f.cr2" and "f.nef".  In that case, LR currently overwrites "f.xmp" with the metadata of whichever photo last has its metadata saved. This proposal doesn't change that behavior.)

Agree to the former, I would very much like this feature. Backward compatibility would not be too hard to realize IMHO.

Currently I shoot RAW only (Olympus .ORF) so I am happily using .XMP sidecar files. The small files and changes are uploaded quickly through my Online backup software. However others supply JPG files and my older pictures are all in this format as well.

Just reorganizing my keyword sets changed all these JPG files. This is not a big problem for my backup to a secondary HDD. But for the online backup, my computer will be busy during a full day to upload 250GB. Alternative would be to use only the catalog files to store XMP, size is less and so quicker upload. However one can find may examples that this introduces a single point of failure which does fail...

Currently, when the "Automatically write changes to XMP" option is checked this ONLY writes metadata to an XMP sidecar file if the file being worked on is a proprietary format - eg. .CR2, .NEF etc.; if you're working on a .PSD (or .TIFF) file (eg. after editing it in Photoshop) then any develop module or keyword changes are written directly into the (often very large) .PSD file with no sidecar created. 

This is OK if you never back up your PSD files to a non-local device, as copying the changed files is pretty quick, but when backing up to a NAS or the Cloud etc., rewriting 100 huge .PSD files just because you added a keyword or changed the output sharpening setting is a huge overhead! 

The solution would be to add an option to make Lightroom store ALL metadata in sidecar files when the "Automatically write changes to XMP" option is checked. The files could be given an extension of xyz.psd.xmp etc. to differentiate them from the XMP files generated for same-named RAW files. 

With this option checked NO metadata would ever be written directly into files such as PSDs, TIFFS etc. and backups of changed metadata to network storage would only have to copy the relatively tiny .XMP files as is already the case for proprietary files. 

Clearly the code to create such .XMP files is already in place for the other base file types so enabling it for .PSDs and TIFFs etc. should be a relatively trivial matter that would save users literally HOURS of backup time and gigabytes of network/cloud bandwidth. 

Rather than switch back to the native format, review your backup strategy.

DNGs only need backing up a single time when they are created, not continually. Once you have these "virgin" backup copies, it doesn't matter if Lightroom saves metadata to its "working" copies of the DNGs. The backup of your adjustment and other work is the backup of your Lightroom catalogue, and this contains 100% of what you've done to these images (which xmp doesn't).

However, I wouldn't disagree with Rob's forecast.

Use the extention as filename part can also do the job.

I'm hope your are wrong to.
Now I have swiched back to my Native camera format until they find a solution.

Benoit

So if you have MyFile.JPG and MyFile.TIF, both to have their xmp in a sidecar, what would be the name of the file into which you put this new tag?

Can't be MyFile.XMP, since well 2 different files can't have the same name.

If MyFile.JPG.XMP and MyFile.TIF.XMP would be the filenames, then would you really need to have a new tag inside?

Anyway, this is probably all academic since it is highly unlikely that Adobe will remedy for us, or so I predict - hope I'm wrong.

Rob