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Participant
April 5, 2018
Question

Exporting Original Photos

  • April 5, 2018
  • 3 replies
  • 786 views

I'm exporting my entire Lightroom CC library by saving the original photo as noted in the preferences. I'm learning however that the metadata may not be saved into the original photo. The date created is the date it was downloaded rather than the date of the original photo. It seems to be stripping the entire metadata as location is not on there as well. This is incredibly frustrating. I'm really trying hard to make Lightroom work for me but I keep running into obstacles, and even more frustrating is that I'm forced into paying for it every month for a year.

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    3 replies

    Participant
    April 5, 2018

    Update: I think I figured out the issue and reporting here if anyone else comes across this. I had Google Drive backup my Pictures directory which is where I store my Lightroom catalog. Originals are stored and correctly have all the metadata as others reported here. The issue however is Google is also syncing cached Lightroom data too. You can navigate your way to the originals directory but Google does not detect it as a directory. I tried symbolic linking the directory to another location but again Google does not like that. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    99jon
    Legend
    April 5, 2018

    The original EXIF data should still be within the file. Obviously exporting will create a new document with a new creation date and modified date. See jpeg example below – the original date is shown in Windows properties and further down the dialog all the original camera data.

    Participant
    April 5, 2018

    Thanks 99jon. This is the first time created date changed for me and information that was previously in More Info is no longer there. I uploaded the file to metapicz.com and you were both correct that the metadata is still there so clearly I'm an idiot. Oddly though when they are uploaded to Google Photos, it's not taking the metadata of these new exported photos.

    F. McLion
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    April 5, 2018

    What is the type of your original files?

    If they are RAW files, LR can not store modifications to it since they are proprietary to the camera manufacturer.

    An original stays an original, always.

    Can you tell us what you are trying to achieve?

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    Participant
    April 5, 2018

    The file types range from .png, .mp4, JPG, and RAW files. I wish what you stated was true but it's not happening for me. You can see in the picture below that they are being stored in the correct directories but the image themselves has incorrect metadata.