Another reason why I love Lightroom

Mike,

Thanks for the very helpful information, that is very much what I was interested in though I didn't articulate the question well. I'm in the process of trying to be better organized and what you described would help me move in that direction.

I appreciate the time you took to write the response.

Jeff

In2Photos wrote in post #3526842
Sure.

Back in the day when I used Bridge/CS2 I would edit my CR2 files and have XMP sidecar files hanging around. One day I made a bunch of edits. Then I went to Windows Explorer and moved a bunch of files around (I had set it to show thumbnails so that I knew what each image was). I don't recall if I had turned on Show Hidden Files (because XMP files are not visible if this is off), but when I moved the CR2 files the XMP files did not go with them (they would have in Bridge). I then renamed the files in Bridge and all my edits were now completely unattached to their files.

This was completely a workflow error but one that made me switch my workflow to DNG which wrote all edits to the DNG file instead of having XMP sidecar files. I lept this workflow when I switched to LR even though LR uses a database because if I ever need to write the edits to the files for some reason I don't have XMP files to worry about again. I never use DPP (in fact it isn't even installed) so DNG works with LR and CS2.

is there a reason why you don't have LR write all the edits straight to the file? I personally feel a lot safer if all the edits and everything are self-contained in the file itself... at least to me, having edits stored in xmp files or in LR's database isn't all that different...

please let me know if I'm mistaken...

jnev wrote in post #3529678
is there a reason why you don't have LR write all the edits straight to the file? I personally feel a lot safer if all the edits and everything are self-contained in the file itself... at least to me, having edits stored in xmp files or in LR's database isn't all that different...

please let me know if I'm mistaken...

If you choose to Autowrite to XMP there is a performance hit. WIth over 15,000 images in my main catalog and a slower computer than most here I can not affors the hit. Everyitme you make an edit LR writes the changes to the file so it can get quite slow.

Also, LR only creates XMP sidecar files for RAW files, in Canon's case CR2 files (or CRW for some older cameras). All other files the edits get written directly to the file itself with the Autowrite option on or if you choose to Write to XMP at any time. The best solution is to probably Write to XMP about once a week or so but I back up my database every night, and a second backup is done once a week.