LR4 does not apply attributes from JPEGs to combined CR2-JPEG files

[J.W. Wall]

<p>I am in the process of importing into Lightroom 4, thousands of image files which I've previously managed in Photoshop CS4 and, recently, CS6. My point and shoot camera (Canon S100, and before that, SD990) provides both a CR2 file and a large JPEG file of each image. I then used the JPEGs for rough sorting, mostly providing metadata and attributes such as star ratings and color labels. When I imported these files into Lightroom, it consolidated the CR2 and JPEG files from each image. It imported the metadata, but not the ratings or labels from JPEGs (it did use the ones from the few CR2 files that I had marked).<br>

I'd really appreciate any suggestion for getting LR to use these attributes, as there is a lot of editing time involved. Thanks!</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>There is no particularly straightforward way to do this in your case, but there are a number of less straightforward ways.</p>

<p>The most efficient solution I can think of is to use a third-party tool like <a href="http://owl.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/">exiftool</a> to copy the XMP data from the JPEG to the matching raw file before importing into Lightroom. The way I would do this is to write a script (a shell script on a Mac, I think they're called "batch files" on Windows) to look for any JPEG file in a hierarchy which had a matching raw file (same base name, different extension) in the same folder, and run</p>

<blockquote>

<p>exiftool -tagsfromfile file.jpg -xmp:all file.cr2</p>

</blockquote>

<p>for each such case.</p>

<p>Actually it looks like exiftool might have the smarts to do the whole thing itself, without the need for a script/batch file -- you could try this on a small folder or hierarchy to see if it works, and if so try it on the whole thing:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>exiftool -tagsfromfile %d%f.jpg -r -ext CR2 folder -xmp:all</p>

</blockquote>

<p>It's possible that I have the order of those arguments wrong -- you might need -xmp:all before the -r. Not sure, need to test.</p>

<p>If command-line tools like this aren't your thing, I can't think of an elegant way.</p>

[J.W. Wall]

<p>Thank you. I am on an iMac and an Air. <br>

I was hoping that Lightroom might be able to sync the files, but so far, I haven't found a way to do that. (Perhaps, sync the CR2 in LR to the attributes in the JPEGs in the file.)</p>

[mark_sirota1]

<p>You can do that, but I discounted it because you have to do it one JPEG/CR2 pair at a time, and you said you had thousands of files to do.</p>

[J.W. Wall]

<p>Yikes, yes, there are a bunch. Well, thanks, I guess it will be a long fall and winter!</p>