Metadata conflict

When an image has a metadata conflict, is there an easy way to compare the
conflicts?
Best,
Christopher

I just added the capability to compare two photos, or two states of the same photo, to ChangeManager.
Thus, for a complete list of the differences (develop settings and metadata) between "metadata conflicted" settings, just choose Change Manager's 'Select To Compare", then do a standard Lightroom 'Read Metadata', followed by a Change Manager 'Compare To Selected' - you will be presented with a detailed list of the differences! - No more guessing!!
Rob

Similar Messages

Metadata conflict: Doesn't show location data

Hello there,
I imported some pictures to Lightroom and edited them there normally. After closing lightroom I edited the location information via GeoSetter (www.geosetter.de). Looking at the images via ACDSee, I see correctly entered City, Sublocation, Procince, Country Code and Country Name in the IPTC data.
Firing up Lightroom 2, I do not see these metadata changes, location fields are all empty. So I click on Synchronize folder and synchronize Metadata. Lightroom now gives all images a Metadata status of "Has been changed". When I click on "Resolve conflict", the location data still is not shown, but actually the location data is deleted when looking at the image again via GeoSetter (or ACDSee) - basically the Lightroom-state-of-things (no locationdata) has been restored I guess. Ok, moving on.
I go back to GeoSetter and reset the location to where it should be, click on synchronize metadata in Lightroom again and the Metadata status is "up to date" - no "resolve conflict" possible, the problem now is:
The location data is STILL in the IPTC fields, Lightroom doesn't show it though, location fields are empty and stay empty even after synchronizing, or Lightroom deletes it as previously stated.
What is the correct way to edit metadata externally and how to tell Lightroom to resolve the metadata conflict by ACCEPTING the external changes and not reverting to the status quo?
Sincerely,
Dennis

>will this method not revert any prior changes made to the images? (e.g. Crop, Keywords, Local Adjustments).
It will, which as you have already figured out, isn't a good idea.
I don't know anything about Geosetter, but my guess is that it's writing the data back into the original photos. Unfortunately, Lightroom doesn't see these changes when Sync folder command is used because it's looking for a Metadata Change date, which is normally stored in XMP. There is a workaround though.
You haven't mentioned the type of files that you're working with, but I'll assume they're raw. If so the workaround is to use the Lr "Save Metadata to file" command before working on them with the external application (Geosetter). This will create an XMP file for each photo that contains all your existing metadata plus any Develop adjustments. Now you can save the new IPTC back to the files using Geosetter. Once that part is completed you can use the "Read Metadata from file" command knowing that all your original Lr metadata and develop adjustments will be copied back along with the new IPTC info.
Above also works with JPEG and TIFF files

Metadata conflict on Mac for every image

I have recently installed 2.0 on a iMAC having previously been running 1.3.
When I migrated the catalog file all the metadata is there ok but eventually the metadata conflict badge appears on every image prior to early 2007 and the metadata status says "conflict detected" as the previews are created.
I have never used any sidecar files so there are no XMPs anywhere. If I click on the error symbol I don't want either choice - "import settngs" destroys the metadata I have and "overwrite" creates a new XMP file which I don't want.
I don't have any problems creating virtual copies so this is not the same as the metadata problem that (I think) is now common knowledge on PC platforms.
I tried deleting the 2.0 catalog upgrading the 1.3 software to 1.4 and doing another catalog migration to 2.0 with the same result.
Also tried moving the catalog folders to outside the directory where the photos are with no change either.
There are 15,000 images or so the vast majority of which are raw but the problem occurs whether they are jpg or canon Raw.
In practice the error doesn't actually seem to mean anything or cause any problems but clearly something is not right.
Ian

Ian - A timestamp issue? Perhaps LR thinks the timestamp of those photos is now different than it
thought prior to LR2? This is pure conjecture but I base this theory on two things:
- LR2 now correctly handles timestamps where LR1 had well known bugs. So there may be a change here
that affects you.
- I've seen many pieces of software that choke on file timestamps when crossing a daylight savings
time change. Anything that needs to compare two copies of the timestamps for the same file has to
deal with this correctly and it's not necessarily trivial. I'm not saying LR2 doesn't handle this
properly - just a thought.
If it were me, I'd look at the timestamps in the XMP files and compare those to the times displayed
in the LR2 GUI.
db

Metadata conflicts in LR

Can somebody point me to a more detailed discussion about Metadata conflicts in LR?
I would like to know how "another application" (for me it's PSCC) can change the metadata and why it could be a conflct.
Specifically, the warning often shows up when I have taken a saved TIF from LR back into PS for subsequent adjustments. I save it back out in the same format (LZW TIF). Why then does the metadata confict exclamation mark show up?
What metadata has been changed? Do the PS tweaks change the metadata? If not why then the warning?
Confused!

bshamilton wrote:
What metadata has been changed?
Change Manager (a plugin I wrote) will show you exactly what's changed.

How do we find out what the conflicts are when the metadata conflict warning appears?

How do we find out what the conflicts are when the metadata conflict warning appears?

LR doesn't provide any way to do that. If you are really curious, you could use the free Exiftool to capture the metadata in the file before and after you do Metadata > Save Metadata To File, and then compare the before and after.
Also note that many people have reported spurious notifications that a file's metadata has changed.

Resolving metadata conflicts

I finally got a handle on the Keywords & hierarchies and made sure that all my keywords will export. I then went back to Title & Caption all my images. For the 4 previous folders of images when I did that, when it told me that there was a metadata conflict, I would just hit "resolve" and it would fix it and tell me it is "up to date". I am ONLY keywording and adding captions in Lightroom 4.4. I am not using an external editor. I have my LR images in ".dng" Now, I just finished 2 more folders and when I tried to resolve the conflict, it gave me an error message on all of them. The metadata status in the right pane says"Changed on disk" (but still shows the alert on my image)
As a test, I selected one image and tried to resolve it but got the same message. It prompts me "save metadata to file?", informing me that the XMP will be written into my "dng" files and prompts me to cancel or continue. When I hit continue, it gives me an error message I/O and says it could not write metadata. If I choose "Read metadata from File", it erases all my keywords and the title and caption. I tried "updating DNG Preview & Metadata" but it just seems to stall when looking at the task bar.
Also, what is the difference when I resolve conflict and get the message "up to date" (I assume that's good) and "metadata has been changed" (is that good or bad?).
I just spent hours & hours writing in the keywords, captions & titles. I'd hate to have to start over.

In the grand scheme, using only file extensions to denote different files is a really bad idea. Yes, it's :easy" but relying on just the extension to keep different files from being overwritten is just poor practice.
Which is the primary reason that Lightroom made the decision to only accept one single file as being the "truth of the image". Ideally, what you would do is import the raw files and treat that as the "original" and make either exported files (consumable files that are not part of the database) or Photoshop -Edit files which are part of the database. Adding the -Edit denote the file is edited and therefore NOT the original.
One can argue with that logic from the standpoint of raw + jpgs...and 1.1 will fix that. But unless you explicitly tell Lightroom to ignore the existence of similarly named files, 1.1 will still prevent multiple duplicates in the database. Although the wording on import has been changed to make is more understandable...
So, yes, in 1.1 you WILL be able to import raw + jpg as a special case so you can get both in the database, but by default Lightroom STILL really only wants a single file to represent the "truth" of an image. And if you are using .tiff and .psd to represent anything other than simply a different file format, you really should reconsider that practice.

Ability to filter catalog for metadata conflicts

I've been trying to find out if there's a way to filter my catalog for metadata conflicts, but it looks like there isn't. I keep running into both types of conflicts, where the LR data hasn't yet been written to the file, or where LR tells me it has been modified elsewhere and I should import the changes (although I use LR almost exclusively to work on my photos).
I'd like to filter my catalog for both the conflicts, get only those photos that have problems, and allow LR to re-attempt to write the proper metadata to them. I can't just scan my catalog manually, I have over 85,000 photos, and it would be a real time-suck.

Raoul,
This has been requested since at least LR2. It is much requested and much needed in my opinion. Better yet, can Adobe also fix the problem of this icon showing up when one never touches the image outside of LR??
Jeff

Why are all the photos in my catalog now marked with metadata "conflict detected"?

Every single photo in my catalog is now marked with metadata "conflict detected". What happened and how can I resolve this issue. I am using Lightroom 5.5 on an iMac with Mavericks 10.9.3.

I don't know what happened, but if you're sure Lightroom has the settings you want for them, just save (xmp) metadata to resolve the conflict.
e.g. select all then press ctrl/cmd-s.

Metadata Conflicts between LR4 and CS6

I recently upgraded to LR4 and CS6 Extended. I will offer start in LR4 but switch to CS6 for additional editing. On some of my thumbnails, I will see a "!" in the upper right hand corner on the thumbnails. When I click on the icon, a pop-up window appear stating a Metadata conflict has occurred. The pop-up window gives you two options: Copy file data into the catalog or have the catalog overwrite the file data. What is the best thing to do knowing you are only working between LR4 and CS6?

This is a known issue with the latest PS update. Refer to the pertinent thread on the PS forum.
Mylenium

Metadata conflict on all images

When I opened LR 5.7 yesterday, All - and I mean ALL of my thumbnails showed an exclamation icon in the upper right. Clicking on the icon, I get a "metadata for this photo has been changed by both LR and another application". I only use LR for metadata edits, so I am not sure why the error is showing up. Any suggestions or corrective actions would be appreciated.

Ian - A timestamp issue? Perhaps LR thinks the timestamp of those photos is now different than it
thought prior to LR2? This is pure conjecture but I base this theory on two things:
- LR2 now correctly handles timestamps where LR1 had well known bugs. So there may be a change here
that affects you.
- I've seen many pieces of software that choke on file timestamps when crossing a daylight savings
time change. Anything that needs to compare two copies of the timestamps for the same file has to
deal with this correctly and it's not necessarily trivial. I'm not saying LR2 doesn't handle this
properly - just a thought.
If it were me, I'd look at the timestamps in the XMP files and compare those to the times displayed
in the LR2 GUI.
db

Metadata: "Conflict Detected...."

I was fooling around with metadata using copies of four of my jpeg's from last year and had some pretty strange results, including the addition of some Chinese characters to my comments section of one file itself. What I did was take a jpeg, copy it to my desktop and import it into LR with a metadata preset that does nothing more than add my name in the Creator field. As I expected, the LR Metadata Status changed to "Has been changed". I saved this to the file and "Creator" in LR popped up as "Author" in the Vista image properties details. Later on I changed the Comments field in LR and saved it to disk. It added the comment to both the Comment and Subject field in the image properties. Then I blanked out the Comments field in my image properties. When I re-opened LR it notified me that the metadata had been changed in an external application and asked if I wanted to overwrite the file or import from the file.
The only Chinese character I recognize after 20 years away from the Orient is the first which is One. It wasn't there when I copied the file, but was added to a single file when I added the word "Yes" to the comments in LR.
What concerns me is that LR apparently compares the metadata in the LR catalog with with that embedded in jpeg's even when you do not have the program set to automatically write out XMP. Could that be the source of LR's sluggish behavior and freeze ups?
BTW, this is on Vista Home Premium.

I don't usually use LR to manage my exported files. The only way I stumbled across this was when I was playing with keyword hierarchies. Saving the metadata changes works for me, but that is not my point. If I match the file properties metadata and LR database metadata exactly so that I do not get the "Metadata Status" message and then change the metadata in the file itself, LR tells me the metadata has been changed externally. I don't see how LR can determine that the metadata has been changed without actually comparing its metadata with the file's metadata. I just wonder if this is necessary and, if not, is it a source of the problems people who use LR as an overall DAM are having. I do not have the automatically write XMP to file checked nor do I have the option to write develop changes to embedded files checked.

Keeping metadata when moving files?

I have LR 2.6. I have a laptop which doesn't have enough disk space for all of my photos, which go back to 2000 (around 22,000). I have three external drives, one is the main one and the other two are backups at this point (smaller space). I need to get another.
I had been importing the photos from the card to my laptop. In the past I've been able to keep a year on the laptop, but with my current camera I don't have enough room, just enough for a couple of months. What I had been doing is copying the older ones to the external drive outside of LR, and deleting them from the laptop, not realizing that I was losing my keywords, titles and I'm not sure what else. I didn't have the settings to create xmp files until recently. The last time I moved files I did it within LR, but it only moved the RAW files, not the xmp.
I had also been keeping all the data in one catalog. I went back to an older one that had a lot of what I'd lost and tried to update that, but there are still around 1,300 files without keywords. And now I have metadata conflicts (not sure if that's from the xmp settings or not).
1-What's the best way to deal with this so that I don't lose my info?
2-Is there any way to easily tell what the conflict is, or at least be able to tell in general where the "best" metadata is?
3-Is there any way to merge metadata from a selection of files to another catalog?
4-And if not answered in one of the above, what's the best way to fix this mess?
Thanks in advance.

The last time I moved files I did it within LR, but it only moved the RAW files, not the xmp.
This can't possibly be correct . If the .xmp file exists, and you move the photo within LR, the xmp moves with it.
I had also been keeping all the data in one catalog. I went back to an older one that had a lot of what I'd lost and tried to update that, but there are still around 1,300 files without keywords. And now I have metadata conflicts (not sure if that's from the xmp settings or not).
I think the only way you can have a metadata conflict is a conflict between the catalog's metadata and the xmp metadata.
1-What's the best way to deal with this so that I don't lose my info?
2-Is there any way to easily tell what the conflict is, or at least be able to tell in general where the "best" metadata is?
3-Is there any way to merge metadata from a selection of files to another catalog?
4-And if not answered in one of the above, what's the best way to fix this mess?
There is no best way to fix this mess. Any way to fix it is probably going to involve a lot of tedious work on your part to straighten things out.
You can merge the metadata from the older catalog into the newer catalog. In the older catalog, select the desired photos and then File->Export as Catalog. Then, in the newer catalog, select File->Import from Catalog. This will cause LR to replace the metadata in the new catalog with the metadata in the older catalog. An alternative when you Import from Catalog is to tell LR to create virtual copies, so you have both sets of metadata in a single LR catalog, which you can then view and decide which one you want to keep.
Good luck

How to search for all files w Metadata mismatch?

I Upgraded recently from LR2.6 to 3.3.
Many of my images have an Exclamation Mark on them, following the upgrade, informing me that there is a Metadata Mismatch...
When I click on it I get this Dialogue box:
Firstly I think LR developers are playing with potentially important information with a lack of care and consideration. I looked at the metadata in 'File Info' in Photoshop before clicking anything: the creation date was the date the file was created and much of the camera data was missing. After I clicked Overwrite Settings all the original data was back on the file. I have no idea how this came to pass exactly, but it shows metadata is an easily lost thing.
If Adobe care about their customers I would think they would make it more clear what was at stake here!
Secondly I would like to know if there is a way to search for all images with this issue to save me having to go through and do it one by one, possibly thousands of times?
Thnaks Peter

areohbee wrote:
Beat,
Please share the SQL statement.
select    ''
         ,LibraryRootFolder.absolutePath || LibraryFolder.pathFromRoot || LibraryFile.lc_idx_filename    as    fullFileName
         ,Image.sidecarStatus
         ,AdditionalMetadata.externalXmpIsDirty
    from      Adobe_images                 as    Image
             ,AgLibraryFile                as    LibraryFile
             ,AgLibraryFolder              as    LibraryFolder
             ,AgLibraryRootFolder          as    LibraryRootFolder
             ,Adobe_AdditionalMetadata     as    AdditionalMetadata
    where     Image.rootFile                =    LibraryFile.id_local
      and     LibraryFile.Folder            =    LibraryFolder.id_local
      and     LibraryFolder.rootFolder      =    LibraryRootFolder.id_local
      and     AdditionalMetadata.image      =    Image.id_local
      and    (Image.sidecarStatus            not in    (0, 7)
       or     AdditionalMetaData.externalXmpIsDirty     >     0)
    order by    fullFileName
I am not sure what the meaning of different values in column sidecarStatus and externalXmpIsDirty mean. This is what I've found out by trial and error:
sideCarStatus = 1 seems to mean "Settings have changed in Catalog compared to XMP"
sideCarStatus = 7 seems to be OK
externalXmpIsDirty = 1 seems to mean "Settings have changed in XMP compared to Catalog"
sideCarStatus = 1 AND externalXmpIsDirty = 1seems to be a Metadata Conflict
The meaning of sideCarStatus > 1 is unknown to me
I usually run the query and then look at the single images reported in LR.
IMHO, this metadata matching is one of the weaker points in LR. I have encountered several conflict situations where I can be 100% sure I have not changed anything on the image outside of LR, and I have "Automatically write Changes to XMP" active. So a conflict should never arise.
Beat Gossweiler
Switzerland

Metadata changed by another app?

After upgrading my 20K image library from 1.4.1 to 2.0, all of my photos show the 'The metadata for this photo has been changed by both Lightroom and another application. How should Lightroom synchronize this data?" flag on each photo.
This is odd because I've never used any other application on any of my photos nor have they been touched by anything other than LR.
My choices are:
Import Settings from Disk - will attempt to read the .xmp files that I don't use and, effectively, wipe out any and all adjustments and keywords I've added.
-or-
Overwrite Settings - will create .xmp files for each photo which I don't want to do. I prefer to just carry all metadata within the LR database rather than clutter my HDD with xmp files.
Any suggestions to help solve this dilemma are much appreciated.
-Dave

I had the same problem on a MAC a few weeks ago and posted it there with no result. I have also never used any external programs or had any sidecar files. I think it is a bug as it happened to all of my images before a certain date.
I managed to isolate it to a specific cause:
I use the import module to rename all my images on import with the date in the name and I always have done since LR 1.0beta. If you expand the metadata panel to show "all" you can see that there is a metadata field called "original filename" underneath the current file name. For images before some time in 07 - this field was not there and those are the ones that came up with the same metadata error flag symptoms that you have. Newer images which have an entry in that metadata field didn't come up with the error.
I suspect this means that older versions of LR import didn't update this field on a name change and somehow this has upset the metadata conflict check.
I couldn't find a way to resolve it without writing out 15k sidecar files which is clunky so I took the opportunity to rebuild my entire raw database as DNGs which has the side effect of curing the problem.

Lr 4.1RC GPS metadata not read in CR2 files on Synch

After importing CR2 files from a Canon 5dMkii I later updated those files with GPS coordinates using the program GeoSetter (www.geosetter.de). The program is a GUI front end to ExifTool that adds the coordinates to the CR2 or JPG files.
After the files are modified, I execute Syncronize Folder in lightroom and select the Scan for metadata updates checkbox. Lightroom picks up the coordinates from JPG files, but not the CR2 image files. The only way I can get the GPS data to be imported is to right-click on the CR2 files and select "Read metadata from the selected files". That works, but any corrections made to the CR2 files after the original import are blown away (there is a warning before the read happens that alerts you to that fact).
So I believe that there's a bug in the Syncronize Folder method that misses the updates from the CR2 files. Is this a known bug, and if not, how can I get this info to Adobe?

OK, let's start again.
I assume you have changed the Geosetter defaults for your Raw files, so rather than creating an XMP sidecar file you are having the GPS data written directly into the CR2 file, is that correct?
And you have two issues:
1. When you synchronise the folder after making the Geosetter change, Lightroom fails to automatically detect the fact that the file has been amended, and you have to force Lightroom to read the updated metadata from the file by doing a "Read Metadata from File" command.
2. And when you do that, all the existing Lightroom changes are 'lost'.
Have I got that right?
If so, re the first point, I think Lightroom is simply operating as designed. I have tested it on both LR3 and LR4 with the same result, and I guess that as Lightroom itself will never write directly to a proprietary Raw file (i.e. it would always write to an XMP sidecar file), it assumes any XMP data created by external apps would also be in an XMP sidecar file. As Geosetter isn't creating one, it can't detect changed Metadata when you sync the folder, and you have to force it to read the file. I know it WILL detect updated metadata if the file is a Jpeg, but again that's because Lightroom DOES write XMP data directly to Jpeg files, so it's more logical that it looks at the XMP area in such files during the sync folder operation.
On the second point, that will always happen as Lightroom, AFAIK, has no capability of merging it's own catalog metadata with externally created metadata. There are two choices when a metadata conflict is detected.....use the in file metadata, which replaces the in-catalog metadata, or re-write the metadata in the file with what's in the catalog. In fact in your situation, because you are not creating an XMP sidecar file, Lightroom will never know that there's a conflict.....so when you do the "Read metadata from file" it's a one-option deal, i.e. replace the in-catalog metadata with what's in the file, and thus losing the Lightroom data.
If your absolute requirement is for GPS data to be stored in the actual CR2 files, I can't think of any option other than changing your workflow....process the files through Geosetter first, before you do any work on them in Lightroom. If you delay importing into Lightroom until the Geosetter work is done, the GPS data will come in on import. If you import first, then do the Geosetter work, then you'll have to do the "Read Metadata from File" before starting any Lightroom processing.
I guess you could also put in a feature request to have the sync behaviour changed for Raw files.

Metadata conflict

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for