A Lightroom Ouch, Update

This is one of the reasons I love the Internet! Godfrey — bless his soul — has provided me an alternative that will mean I don't have to re-import all my images. (See his comment to my original post.) Instead, I can simply highlight the files in question and use this simple two-step fix . . .

Save metadata to the DNG file

Read metadata from the DNG file

That's it! It works. Whew!

So why am I still fuming?

• I learned this after deleting and then re-importing the 12,000+ images from Asia.
• I shouldn't have had to learn it at all.
• My Google and Adobe Forums searches found no answers at all, let alone a simple solution like Godfrey's
• Why should such a solution require that I find the one individual in the world who seems to know how to do it easily?

I have no doubt this is part of what keeps some people away from digital photography — or computers in general. If phones, radios, refrigerators, or toasters were this complicated we all be isolated and uninformed, eating stale bread and drinking warm beer. Technology should not be such a puzzle to make work. I'd much rather spend my time making art rather than fighting bad software programming.

With Godfrey's solution, I can now start updating the other 7,000+ files from my G1. Gee, what fun.

Thanks, Godfrey. Adobe should hire you.

Comments

[Godfrey DiGiorgi]

Thanks, Brooks!

I posted this to one or another of the DPReview forums, to the FourThirdsPhoto.org forum, and (I think) to the GetDPI.com forum when I noticed that LR v2.6 finally did the right thing with respect to Panasonic LensID information. Funny that Google doesn't find it.

Regards complexity, I dunno that this is so much different from other silliness in our daily lives. It seems to be amazingly difficult to set up a television service these days, and then to install and use a modern television's bazillion features is utterly confounding. Used to be you just bought the TV, plugged it in, and twisted the rabbit ears around until it looked good.

Photography has always been a technological medium, with a river of complexity under the surface, even in the days of film and prior. With the advent of digital image capture and processing, and management, ... and all the other stuff we take for granted now ... that river of complexity has swelled to an ocean.

My education and career netted me insights into this technology that I enjoy sharing .. that's one of the reasons I started teaching workshops last year. It is both uplifting and a delight to help.

BTW, I agree: Adobe should hire me. ];-)

[James Bullard]

There's more than one person who knew that DNG could incorporate the sidecar data directly into the file. I learned that some time ago, I think on Lynda.com, probably from one of Deke McClelland's videos. I've read it other places as well.

[James Bullard]

Check the Adobe website http://www.adobe.com/products/dng/?promoid=DTEHA. Under "Key Benefits" it states that "The specification allows for the addition of private metadata to DNG files, enabling differentiation."

[Phil Anastasio]

A word of caution that I have unfortunately found in saving metadata to your DNG file is that your original DNG "negative" is overwritten. After saving metadata on an image that I cropped and developed I found that I no longer had the original image should I wanted to re-develop (it also eliminated the history on that file as well). Hope someone out there has a workaround - Since I did this I have been working with copies or virtual copies. Thank goodnesss for having an original DNG backup philosophy.

[Brooks Jensen]

In Lightroom, just click on the RESET button and it will take you back before you did any edits to the DNG file.

In Photoshop, while opening the DNG file with Camera Raw, click on the far right set of options SNAPSHOTS and select the IMPORT snapshot. That will let you open the original DNG before any adjustments.

At least these two options have always worked for me. In fact, the whole purpose of DNG and Lightroom's non-destructive editing is to allow this very kind of backstepping to be possible. Give it a try.
Brooks

[Jeff Alu]

Thanks so much for this information! Sorry to hear what you had to go through to get it though...