Today’s Question: How can I change the name in the Artist field in the metadata for my photos in Lightroom Classic? For some reason this field doesn’t seem to be editable.
Tim’s Quick Answer: Lightroom Classic does not allow you to edit the Artist field in the EXIF metadata. You would need to change the setting for your camera for future images. To edit the metadata for existing photos would require a software tool that supports editing EXIF metadata values.
More Detail: The Artist field in the EXIF metadata is generally established in the EXIF metadata for your photos by your camera. Like many of the other EXIF metadata fields such as camera model and serial number, most applications such as Adobe Lightroom Classic will not allow you to edit the Artist field.
You can change the value assigned to the Artist field for your camera using the software tools provided by your camera’s manufacturer. For example, I use a Canon digital SLR, and can use the Canon EOS Utility to edit the Artist metadata field for my camera. In addition, I can update other metadata field settings, such as to add copyright information to my photos at the time of capture. You simply connect the camera to a computer (such as via a USB connection), and then use the software to update the settings on the camera.
For photos that have already been captured with incorrect (or missing) information in the Artist field, you would need to use a third-party metadata utility to make those changes. There are only a handful of these utilities that I know of, and in my experience they can be a little difficult to use.
For example, the ExifTool software is a command line tool that can be a little complicated. You can learn about ExifTool here: