Today’s Question: I am wondering what the Comments section under the Library module in Lightroom Classic is meant for. This Comments section always shows “Comments not supported here”, so no entries can be done or edited, although this field remains always empty. Can you please clarify?
Tim’s Quick Answer: The Comments section at the bottom of the right panel in the Library module in Lightroom Classic enables you to view and add comments for images that have been published via one of the online Publish Services options. For example, you can view “likes” and comments, and add comments, for photos you have shared to Facebook directly from within Lightroom Classic.
More Detail: Many photographers like to share their images on social media sites and other online outlets. In my experience, however, I’ve found that many photographers are not aware that it is possible to share photos to a number of online services directly from within Lightroom Classic, using the Publish Services feature.
When you configure a service under Publish Services, that service behaves much like a collection in Lightroom Classic in terms of grouping photos together. The difference is that with a Publish Service you can publish images that have been added to that collection to the applicable online service.
For example, you can configure Facebook as a Publish Service. You can then add images to that Publish Service collection, and then publish the images. When you add a new image to the collection, you can publish again to add just that new image to the applicable service (such as Facebook in this example).
For images that have been published in this way, if the service in question supports comments, you can see (and add) comments via the Comments section at the bottom of the right panel in the Library module.
For example, Facebook supports both “likes” and comments. You can therefore see a count of likes for a given photo, as well as comments others have posted to the photo, within the Comments section. You can even add comments (or replies to other comments) in this section.
Of course, if you don’t use the Publish Services feature, then you won’t be able to make use of the Comments section. You could, however, add your own personal comments to metadata in one of the various fields intended for this type of purpose.