Concept questions (editing jpegs, migrating from Album/Elements)

Question

Hi Lightroom experts,
I have a collection of jpegs which I have been organizing in Adobe Album, and now Elements 5.0. I was pleased to see that Elements 5 could write the metadata (keywords) to the jpegs rather than relying upon a proprietary database. It was clear to me that in Elements the keywords were in a separate database and one had to expressly write the tags to the files.
In Lightroom there is also a separate database (which requires management - like backing it up on a regular basis). What is not clear to me is how to write the metadata/tags to the original jpeg files. Does that happen automatically or must I instruct Lightroom to do so?
Must I export the files in order to write the adjusted metadata? If so, that means I have two copies (original and exported).
Secondly, I have both Photoshop CS2 and Elements 5.0. Lightroom only has an option to Edit In Elements but I want that option to be Edit in Photoshop. It is unclear how to change that configuration.
Finally, does anyone have any comments regarding migrating from Album/Elements to Lightroom for an amateur photographer like myself? Would you advise that? (I do like what I've seen in Lightroom but need to understand much more).
Any help/pointers would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Fielding,
I switched from Elements 5 after only a few weeks with it when I saw the great improvements in Lightroom from beta 4 to version 1. Several reasons for my switch. One, Elements only supports a few metadata tags, mostly keywords. I needed more to do what I wanted to do. Many people use collections in Elements for things that aren't in my opinion suitable, like for keeping trip or event pictures together. You can have that information in metadata by choosing an appropriate metadata field and using it. I'm using Job Identifier in Workflow myself. So I find the metadata support far superior in Lightroom. I was also concerned that Elements, being a product for hobbyists, would not be able to handle the large number of images I intend to put into the database. I already had trouble with the elements database ballooning so I was very concerned. I also think it has about the ugliest interface I've seen in a long time. I suppose the latter doesn't matter, but LR is SO beautiful!
I can't help you with how to get photoshop to show up. Did you try Edit/Preferences? If Elements is the first one there, the second one allows you to choose. Which Photoshop do you have? Before I got CS2 I think I did have PS find it for Lightroom.
You can ask Lightroom to write out the metadata but it does not do it in such a way that you can see it in some other applications. When it says it writes it out as XMP it means it. It's in there, but you can only see it with applications that can read XMP as opposed to IPTC etc. When you export, it does write the metadata in the way most products expect it. I've decided not to worry about this though because a) I back up my lightroom database, and b) if I do decide to abandon Lightroom, or it abandons me, I will in any case have to export everything because without exporting you don't have the Develop adjustments either. Then I back up my LR backups and my image repository, usually nightly.
My migration from Elements did not go very well but I was lucky because I'd just started entering stuff in Elements when I abandoned it -- so I didn't lose much. You can do a search of this forum, maybe on the word elements, to see several threads about the problems people have had. If you have everything in Album you might try a transfer from that first and see if it works. You can always toss your LR database if you want to try a different way of loading it. You do not have to move your files to import them into LR.
If you want a catalog, you will need a database so you get reasonable response on queries, which is presumably the reason for wanting a catalog. Both the Elements database and the LR database are standard databases that you can manipulate yourself, should you choose to do so. Elements is Access, LR is SQLite. I did look at the Elements db but haven't done anything with the LR database. I hope I don't have to because LR can export the metadata. Collections are not in metadata so I'm using collections only for things I don't need to keep.