Today’s Question: I updated from Lightroom 5 to Lightroom CC. All seemed to go well, except I had notes regarding my specific Lightroom Print Adjustments for various papers in my Metadata section of Lightroom 5 under Comments. This section is not in Lightroom CC and the data didn’t transfer. Would you have any ideas how to recoup this data?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Your metadata didn’t disappear. It is simply “hiding” at the moment. It sounds like you are using the “User Comment” field of metadata, which is part of the EXIF metadata standard. You can find that field by clicking the popup to the left of the Metadata header on the right panel in the Library module and choosing “EXIF” or “EXIF and IPTC”.
More Detail: Lightroom enables you to choose which metadata information is displayed for your photos, so that you are able to get to the information you need without necessarily being overwhelmed by information you don’t need to see (or don’t need to see very often).
While you’re not able to pick and choose the specific metadata fields you want displayed in the Metadata section of the right panel in the Library module, you can choose among several different categories of metadata using the popup to the left of the Metadata header on the right panel.
Choosing the “EXIF” option, for example, presents the EXIF metadata fields, which primarily consist of the information recorded at the time of capture, such as the equipment and camera settings used to capture the photo.
So, if you don’t see a particular metadata field you are interested in, you can simply choose a different option from the popup to the left of the Metadata header. I generally prefer to use the “EXIF and IPTC” option, though admittedly this results in a significant amount of information being displayed for the current photo. In any event, you can change the display option, or even collapse the Metadata section when you don’t need to view the information about your photos and want a cleaner display within Lightroom.