Sidecar/xmp file for DNG in ACR

I know that for a .CR2 file and similar ACR creates an .xmp file with the settings.

However, when using Magic Lantern dual ISO, I get a .DNG after de-blending which I then convert in ACR (7.1). The .DNG's I guess have the settings embedded in them. Is there a way of saving the settings ouside the .DNG - i.e. in an .xmp? I want to keep the original .CR2 file and the ACR settings without having to save the .DNG.

Right now I open the DNG's in ACR by simply dragging them onto CS6 and I get the ACR GUI. I do have 'save settings in .xmp' set (or I wouldn't get them for CR2 files). I also have the 'ignore .xmp files' off under the DNG settings which seems redundant since I can't create them!

Or is there another program that can just take the DNGs are create the .xmps that I can then 'not ignore'?

Thanks,

Ed.

Hi Ed,

I played with ACR in PS CC. See the attached screenshot. I used a DualISO DNG as the subject DNG. I dragged it onto the PS CC icon to launch the ACR dialog. I set it up to the same preferences you describe above.

I click on the flyout menu at the upper right of the ACR controls panel (the arrow in the attached figure).

This flyout gives you options that seem like they should be pretty obvious. However, as the handy icons indicate, the "Export Settings to XMP" option did nothing I could see. There are no "..." after the menu item, meaning, you should not expect a dialog of some sort once you invoke this option (like a file browser where you can name and save the XMP).

The green check mark indicates "success" for me - "Save Settings ..." brings up a dialog window with the default filename of "<filename>.XMP". I saved this next to the DNG. At least it generated a XMP file.

When I open the image again in ACR the image loads according to the corrections I made prior to saving the DNG. It appears this is due to the XMP sitting next to the DNG being read automatically. For example, I made some edits, did a "Save Settings..." to an XMP next to the DNG. I then opened the DNG in a text editor and typed in changes to some values (changed Saturation to -100 for example, something easy to see if it is read correctly). The next time I opened the DNG in ACR, the image settings in the altered XMP were indeed applied. You can force the XMP settings using "Load Settings..." and navigating to the XMP you just saved.

It seems like there is a bug or the controls are not very intuitive or we are missing some information as to where the "Export Settings to XMP" actually saves something.

Interestingly, if I "Save Settings..." and save the XMP next to the DNG and then open the DNG again and do a "Export Settings to XMP", the XMP that resulted from the "Save Settings" operation gets erased! I thought that, once I "Save Settings" to and XMP, the Export Settings to XMP would "see" the existing XMP and just overwrite it with the new settings.

weird. I should probably read the manual to see if I am using these controls correctly. Probably not!

Hope you are able to follow my rambling.

Kirk

There's this:

http://forums.adobe.co​m/thread/1036278

the XMP gets written into the DNG - but I would think there would be a way to override that. Or at least not delete the existing external XMP.

If you make the dng read only then acr will read/write the changes to/from a xmp file.

Paul MR wrote in post #16418037
If you make the dng read only then acr will read/write the changes to/from a xmp file.

Very clever ^^.

I can't check this out at the moment because I'm not at home, but it seems to me that ExifTool will extract the xmp from a dng.

I have always converted to dng at import to Lightroom and kept the CR2s as backup on another drive (straddling the fence), so I continue that workflow with the Dual ISO files. Side benefit is that rewriting them as new dngs compresses them from 42 MB to something in the 20s.

You can export the xmp data from Bridge or Photoshop.
Goto File Info and export it.

Thanks a bunch. Kirk, I did follow your 'ramblings' just fine. My windows version works/doesn't work exactly as you described.

It would be nice to be able to write .xmps for all the files in one go (doesn't work with 'save settings' and multiple images selected), but at least I can get them saved. I'm guessing I will have the same issues with the other methods, although I'll try bridge.

I must admit I don't use ACR that much and I'm still not used to those small tabs so I hadn't even opened that tab, so that was helpful in itself.

It would have taken me a wuile to raslize 'save settings' saved an .xmp file. Now I guess I know something else I didn't realize that is potentially useful in that I can load settings for an image from any sidecar file.

Cheers,

Ed.

Paul MR wrote in post #16418037
If you make the dng read only then acr will read/write the changes to/from a xmp file.

OK, I think I'm going to use this method, would never have thought of that either. I can make all the dng's read only in one go, then ACR writes all the .xmp files like it does with cr2 raws.

Why would you need to go to this trouble to get an XMP out when the DNG is a standard, well supported file format? Just curious.

tim wrote in post #16419945
Why would you need to go to this trouble to get an XMP out when the DNG is a standard, well supported file format? Just curious.

So why don't I want to keep the dng and remove the .cr2 file?

Well, because in this case of 'DualISO' it is not the same as the .cr2 file. The .cr2 has even other 2 lines at different ISOs and been processed into a 'conventional' raw file, the dng, and just as with any other processing the algorithm to produce the .dng is improving all the time.

So, I want to keep the .cr2 files in case I want to re-process them and the .xmp files for the same, but not the .dng's which in this case are just more of an intermediate file.

If the processing is always getting better can't you just save the CR2s and reprocess them later?

I don't know anything about magic lantern or dual iso.

In the last couple days A1ex has posted at least half a dozen new versions while he works on problems, each time a little better.
I don't use ACR (or PS for that matter), but I seem to remember reading that nowadays it has an option to create an LR-like catalog. Is that true? In LR when I do a new cr2HDR conversion I can simply copy/paste the edits from the previous one if I want to compare the two versions or overwrite the old one if I don't want to preserve it.