Lightroom CC/Cloud metadata not syncing locally

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
January 20, 2021
1 reply
1129 views

I am new to the Lightroom CC/Cloud world so I'm trying to understand how it handles metadata updates.

I have added 100 photos that are on my local Windows PC to Lightroom. The photos have sync'd to the cloud. I then went in and modified the metadata (Title and Caption) fields and say in the Info pane that the Sync status showed it was syncing and finally showed it was synced and backed up. But when I look at the file locally I do not see the changes. My expecation is that when I look at the original file on my PC (in it's orignal file path location) that the metadata would be updated.

Is Lightroom updating a local copy somewhere else on my PC (ie. does it keep a version in a different file path location)? I can see that when I export the file that it has the correct metadata and I can login to the cloud website and verify it has the correct metadata.

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Correct answer Jim Wilde

When you import images to Lightroom (from a memory card OR from an existing hard drive) those images are first copied into the Lightroom app's local library space, and it's from there that they are uploaded to the cloud. The original images on the card or hard drive are no longer referenced by Lightroom. But even if they were, you still wouldn't see any metadata changes in them, as Lightroom is a non-destructive editor, i.e. changes are only stored in the catalog, never written back to the image files. Thus you will only see the changes reflected when viewing the images within any of the synced Lightroom apps, and of course when you export an image the changes are included in the output file.

Jim WildeCorrect answer

Community Expert

When you import images to Lightroom (from a memory card OR from an existing hard drive) those images are first copied into the Lightroom app's local library space, and it's from there that they are uploaded to the cloud. The original images on the card or hard drive are no longer referenced by Lightroom. But even if they were, you still wouldn't see any metadata changes in them, as Lightroom is a non-destructive editor, i.e. changes are only stored in the catalog, never written back to the image files. Thus you will only see the changes reflected when viewing the images within any of the synced Lightroom apps, and of course when you export an image the changes are included in the output file.

S

shaminanAuthor

New Participant

Thank you... For Lightroom Classic it had the option to save metadata to the local file. I don't see that option in Lightroom CC... Also if I understand correctly Lightroom is putting a copy of the file in its local library space (do you know where?)... So I will end up with two copies of the file on my hard drive? Just trying to avoid filling up the hard drive.

Jim Wilde

Community Expert

The ability to save metadata to the file doesn't exist in Lightroom.

Yes, your understanding is now correct, there's always an initial copy made by Lightroom. As to where, the default on Windows is in the user's AppData>Local library, however that can be changed in the Lightroom Preferences>Local Storage tab.

In theory, that local copy will become eligible for deletion once the images have been uploaded to the cloud. However, that deletion is subject to some complex rules which can mean they hang around perhaps longer than the user would like (though they can be manually deleted provided you are certain they have been synced and backed up in the cloud).

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