External editing in Lightroom

After a long weekend shooting, I can't see to find out if you can make adjustments to an image in Lightroom, edit the original file outside of lightroom, then updating the Lightroom image to reflect those external adjustments. For instance... With tagging, If 10000 photos are all imported into LR, and you make batch adjustments for color, exposure, etc, while simultaneously tagging a copy of those images offsite with keywords, how do I get those offsite tagged images to merry up with the edited versions in Lightroom? Is it as simple as overwriting the locally stored images? Or if I do that, would I lose the adjustments made? Is there a way to possibly do this?

Thanks

If the keywording is contained in a .xmp file for each image, rather than being appended directly to the image file then that would work in the way you want it to. Place the .xmp's in the same folder as the original RAW's and LR should detect that they are there and also contains different data to that held by LR's database. This should throw up the ! symbol in the grid preview in the Library module, prompting you to update the LR catalogue, or ignore the .xmp.

Although I use LR for managing all of my images pretty much all of the time, I also use other programs from the Creative Suite than just PS, and when working with those I use Bridge as my file browser. If I open any image folder Bridge automatically starts to produce .xmp's for the images. LR see's these and as they are effectively empty of additional data, keeps asking me if I want to update the LR data, or the data in the file.

For non RAW formats where writing to the file is normal then every time you edit a file in another program it detects the change and throws up the same indication. At least LR4.4 does for me, and the latest versions seemed to be the same when I tested them. So if you are working with non RAW files writing the version with the keyword data over the existing files should also work. LR is quite happy to keep applying the same processing changes to images that have been edited in external programs and resaved. I do all of my monochrome conversions in LR, but sometimes to get the best results it is necessary to fix the colour conversion first, and do the monochrome conversion on a bitmap file. You can go back and edit the colour bitmap file, and LR will then update the monochrome version. This applies to Virtual Copies of the file too.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #17960006
If the keywording is contained in a .xmp file for each image, rather than being appended directly to the image file then that would work in the way you want it to. Place the .xmp's in the same folder as the original RAW's and LR should detect that they are there and also contains different data to that held by LR's database. This should throw up the ! symbol in the grid preview in the Library module, prompting you to update the LR catalogue, or ignore the .xmp.

Although I use LR for managing all of my images pretty much all of the time, I also use other programs from the Creative Suite than just PS, and when working with those I use Bridge as my file browser. If I open any image folder Bridge automatically starts to produce .xmp's for the images. LR see's these and as they are effectively empty of additional data, keeps asking me if I want to update the LR data, or the data in the file.

For non RAW formats where writing to the file is normal then every time you edit a file in another program it detects the change and throws up the same indication. At least LR4.4 does for me, and the latest versions seemed to be the same when I tested them. So if you are working with non RAW files writing the version with the keyword data over the existing files should also work. LR is quite happy to keep applying the same processing changes to images that have been edited in external programs and resaved. I do all of my monochrome conversions in LR, but sometimes to get the best results it is necessary to fix the colour conversion first, and do the monochrome conversion on a bitmap file. You can go back and edit the colour bitmap file, and LR will then update the monochrome version. This applies to Virtual Copies of the file too.

Alan

Thanks for that feedback! I will have to test that but not sure if it will work as I would need the file tagged in the image file. Unless when exported, LR embeds that data from the XMP file directly into the metadata of the file. If that is the case, then this could work nicely.

cory1848 wrote in post #17960159
Thanks for that feedback! I will have to test that but not sure if it will work as I would need the file tagged in the image file. Unless when exported, LR embeds that data from the XMP file directly into the metadata of the file. If that is the case, then this could work nicely.

LR never embeds the added EXIF data directly into the image file as held in the catalogue for RAW files, or even RGB bitmap files, unless you specifically tell it to do so. In LR the added exif data is only held in the LR database file, that's the Catalogue.lrcat file that LR uses (where catalogue is the name of the catalogue that you see at the top left of the LR window, by default). When you export a finished image from LR, such as a JPEG, as part of the export process you have to option to allow LR to write differing amounts of the EXIF and other image metadata to the file. Options include All metadata, Copyright Info only and a couple of other options, it also allows you to have it strip location info only if you so choose. I always have LR include all of the metadata in my exported files. If you check out my Flickr you will see what is generally included. It should also be present in all of my images uploaded directly to POTN and visible in my gallery. As long as you are only worried about what will end up in the final exported image what I suggested in my first post will work fine for you. If you will ever need to use the RAW images in another RAW converter, that is not Adobe, then you can use the command to write the metadata to the actual file. Personally this is the only time I would bother with doing that. If you do change the file metadata, and then make a subsequent change in LR you keep getting messages telling you the metadata is inconsistent and what do you want to do about it.

Alan

BigAl007 wrote in post #17960237
LR never embeds the added EXIF data directly into the image file as held in the catalogue for RAW files, or even RGB bitmap files, unless you specifically tell it to do so. In LR the added exif data is only held in the LR database file, that's the Catalogue.lrcat file that LR uses (where catalogue is the name of the catalogue that you see at the top left of the LR window, by default). When you export a finished image from LR, such as a JPEG, as part of the export process you have to option to allow LR to write differing amounts of the EXIF and other image metadata to the file. Options include All metadata, Copyright Info only and a couple of other options, it also allows you to have it strip location info only if you so choose. I always have LR include all of the metadata in my exported files. If you check out my Flickr you will see what is generally included. It should also be present in all of my images uploaded directly to POTN and visible in my gallery. As long as you are only worried about what will end up in the final exported image what I suggested in my first post will work fine for you. If you will ever need to use the RAW images in another RAW converter, that is not Adobe, then you can use the command to write the metadata to the actual file. Personally this is the only time I would bother with doing that. If you do change the file metadata, and then make a subsequent change in LR you keep getting messages telling you the metadata is inconsistent and what do you want to do about it.

Alan

Thank you so much Alan. I just found the LR Transporter plug in http://www.photographe​rs-toolbox.com/products/l​rtransporter.php. After some experimentation, this does exactly what I need without having to keep telling LR to update catalog. Thanks for all of your help!