Today’s Question: While I use Lightroom Classic to manage my photos, sometimes I find it easier to just browse in Bridge. Since the Keywords field is a standard metadata field, is there any reason I can’t just update keywords in Bridge and have them update in Lightroom Classic?
Tim’s Quick Answer: I don’t recommend updating any metadata outside of Lightroom Classic, as doing so will lead to potentially problematic metadata mismatches.
More Detail: Because Lightroom Classic uses a catalog while software such as Adobe Bridge is a simple browser, it can be problematic to make updates to your photos outside of Lightroom Classic.
When you update metadata in Lightroom Classic those updates are saved in the catalog, and if you have enabled the option to save metadata to the source files they the metadata will also be updated in the file on your hard drive. When you update metadata for photos in Adobe Bridge, the updates are saved directly to the source image, but of course this will not cause the Lightroom Classic catalog to be updated.
So, if you’ve enabled the option to automatically save changes to the source file (via the “Automatically write changes into XMP” checkbox on the Metadata tab of the Catalog Settings dialog) your updates can be seen outside of Lightroom Classic. However, updates from outside Lightroom Classic can’t be seen in your catalog.
It is possible to synchronize the metadata to resolve this issue. For example, you could add keywords in Bridge, then go to Lightroom Classic and resolve the metadata mismatch by importing the updated metadata from the source files. However, I don’t recommend this approach because there is a risk of getting out of sync. For example, if you add keywords in Adobe Bridge, then add keywords in Lightroom Classic, and then resolve the metadata mismatch by importing the metadata from the source file, you will have lost the keywords you added in Lightroom Classic after the update in Bridge.
My recommendation is to always apply metadata updates in Lightroom Classic if you’re using Lightroom Classic to manage your photos. It is perfectly fine to browse your photos using other software, but I strongly recommend making any updates in that other software to avoid problems in Lightroom Classic.
