Lightroom Classic and Lightroom February Update
Adobe released a new update for Lightroom Classic (13.2), Lightroom desktop (7.2), and Camera Raw (16.2) that included a couple of small new features along with new camera support, new lens support, and bug fixes.
New Sorting Options in Lightroom Classic
In Grid view, in the Toolbar, you will find a few new options in the Sort drop-down menu for sorting the current view.
New Smart Collection / Metadata Filter Options
When using the Metadata filter in the Library Filter bar above the thumbnails in Grid view, or when creating new smart collections, you’ll find a few more criteria relating to Masking, Lens Blur, and Healing at your disposal. This will make it easier to find/filter photos based on if any of those features have been applied to given photos.
Flags Written to XMP Metadata
For compatibility with Lightroom desktop’s ability to work directly on locally stored photos without uploading to the cloud, it is now possible to have flag state written to and read from a photo’s XMP metadata space. This is also helpful for Lightroom Classic users who routinely have the catalog write to XMP and have the flag state included along with other metadata. This is not currently compatible with Adobe Bridge.
Be sure to update all your applications to ensure compatibility across apps and get the latest fixes and improvements.
I hope that Photo mechanics picks up on this so that we don’t do double the work.
Flags Written to XMP Metadata?!
Question #1: How do we turn on this feature or is it simply “included” now in the option to write Metadata to XMP?
Question #2: What about all the previously flagged photos in our libraries? How do we get those flags written to XMP?
With the latest update, it is just part of the functionality. You can select photos in Grid view then go to Metadata > Save metadata to file, then let it run until the progress meter completes.
Thank you, Rob, but this creates even more questions in a way:
1) I have “Write metadata to XMP” on in the Settings – so that answers my first question.
2a) If this functionality is new, it means all the previously written metadata in XMP do not include any flag status (I was aware of that) versus the fact that any new photo of mine now automatically has the flag status in its XMP metadata. So that in turn means we have to manually select all photos made before this version of LrC, go to Grid view and then choose the Metadata > Save metadata to file command in order to update all old XMP files!… With a catalogue of almost 100,000 photos on an external HDD (no SSD) with a rather modest write speed, I think this is going to take an enormous amount of time before the progress is complete!
2b) Am I correct in assuming that, when we edit an “old” photo (flag status not in the metadata of the XMP file), thus forcing old metadata to be overwritten by new metadata, the new metadata will include the flag status?
I haven’t tested what happens when you have had write metadata checked prior to this feature with regards to flag state. I would suggest doing a few small tests with your catalog to see what happens if you make a small edit change to a pre-existing photo that had a pick flag already applied. You’d have to check in either another LrC catalog (where you import that photo to see what metadata comes in) or using Lr desktop’s local feature to see what metadata is displayed. Once you know what happens, and if you decide it is worth updating 100K past images for flag state, I’d do a test on a small subset (5K or something) to see how long that takes, and then go from there.