Another LR question

[chadlatta]

<p>So that I understand this better, if I were to import a batch of photos into LR, then apply keywords and maybe make a few adjustments and then right click and save metadata....will that info be available later to LR even if it is removed from the library and reimported?</p>

<p>Im not sure I want to keep all my photos in LR as my machine currently isnt the greatest, but I would like the option to edit and then remove them, but bring them back in later with all the same info.</p>

<p>Also, would that keyword info be available in bridge or maybe expression media?</p>

<p>Thanks<br>

-Chad-</p>

[godfrey]

<p>Simplistically, the answer is "yes", but not all the information in the LR catalog is capable of being stored in metadata. What can be stored in metadata depends to some degree on the file format too ... DNG files and .XMP files can hold the most complete metadata, for instance. Information as to a file's editing history, inclusion in collections, "pick" flagging, etc, is not included in metadata either. Basically the metadata saved out to a file includes IPTC, Keywords, and the current state of the rendering adjustments. </p>

<p>A better strategy beyond saving out the metadata, if you want to remove various photos from your main LR catalog but save all the information associated with editing them, is to put all such files into a Collection and then use the "File->Export as Collection..." command on that collection. This will give you some options as to exactly what to include in the export process.</p>

<p>Typically, if you want to keep the files on disk and just take them out of the main catalog to help improve performance, you would export the catalog without any of the options checked. This will create just a catalog file containing *all* the information about those image files, without the previews. You can then remove the files from your default catalog.</p>

<p>Later, you can re-import the exported catalog. As long as you haven't changed the location of the files, they will all be brought back into whatever catalog you want to use them in exactly as they were. Alternatively, you can tell LR to open just that catalog ... it will generate the previews and present the files precisely as they were last when you last had them in your main catalog. </p>

[robert_hall2]

<p>I strongly urge you to use Bridge, a part of photoshop CS2, CS3 and (probably) CS4. Bridge has much more powerful metadata functions. Save the files in TIFF or Jpeg format. I have found that Lightroom is a bit tricky to use for some applications. It was not designed to replace the metadata functions in Bridge.</p>

[godfrey]

<p>If Chad is using LR, the notion of using Bridge to save his LR information is useless. Bridge will know nothing about LR information, like the full editing history of an image file, no matter what he does. </p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>Just a couple corrections to Godfrey's response:</p>

<p>- The XMP data ll contains the same thing regardless of file format. The difference is in how and where the XMP data is stored -- for JPEG, TIFF, and DNG it goes directly into the original. For raw files it goes into a sidecar .xmp file. There is a little bit of control offered on this in Lightroom's preferences.</p>

<p>LR Guru Brad Snyder has an excellent writeup of <a href="http://blogs.oreilly.com/lightroom/2008/12/xmp-sidecar-files---whats-miss.html">what's missing from the XMP data</a> .</p>

<p>- When he said "Export as Collection" he meant "Export as Catalog".</p>

[godfrey]

<p>Thanks for the correction on "Export as Catalog", Mark. I was typing too fast. ;-)</p>

<p>I have seen differences in the metadata exported from Lightroom from the same master into JPEG, PSD, TIFF and DNG, comparing them with EXIFtool. Perhaps it is EXIFtool that doesn't read all the formats identically. </p>

[chadlatta]

<p>Thanks for the help. I thought about using bridge as well but im trying to simplify things as much as possible. The reason I am bringing it all up is that I can see my collection growing over time, most of which I will probaly never edit or use, but I dont feel right deleting it forever. So I would like to have the option to catalog it and then thin it out over time, but still be able to bring it back later if need be.</p>

<p>If I export as a catalog, then it would probably be best to put it in a collection first and then export it. Like create a collection of "archive" or whatever and then just move junk files to that, then export accordingly right?</p>

<p>the only real data I want to keep is the key words.</p>

<p>Thanks..</p>

 

[godfrey]

<p>A test just showed the same image file exported to JPEG, PSD, TIFF, and DNG outputted this much metadata when examined with EXIFtool:<br /> PSD, TIFF: 226 lines<br /> JPEG: 242 lines<br /> DNG: 313 lines</p>

<p>Some of the differences are definitely format specific metadata, but exactly what and which will take deeper analysis to separate out IPTC, EXIF and LR parametric adjustment information.</p>

[godfrey]

<p>Chad,</p>

<p>If it is only Keywords you are interested in, doing the "Metadata->Save metadata to file" operation will write all of that data out to any file format, whether to the file itself (DNG, JPEG, TIFF, PSD or .XMP sidecar for native RAW) without question. </p>

<p>I don't delete anything, but occasionally I prune my default catalog using the strategy I stated above. Move the files I want to remove to a collection, then Export as Catalog, then delete those files from the default catalog. I name these 'pruning' catalogs with the pattern "YYMMDD-pruned[-tag]" where tag might be the name of events pruned, the original date ranges of the pictures, etc. Each of the catalog files is pretty small: a pruned catalog containing information for 230 image files is about 3M in size and compresses to a 300Kbytes zip file. For stuff I'm only interested in possibly bringing back in some time in the future, this makes it easy to find what's what in the archives and doesn't take much space.</p>

[chadlatta]

<p>thank you for the responses. It makes much more sense now.</p>