Today’s Question: In your answer you said, “if you save metadata updates to the source images from Lightroom Classic”. Can you clarify what that means and how to do so?
Tim’s Quick Answer: Saving metadata to the source images means that standard metadata will be included in the image files on your hard drive, not just in the Lightroom Classic catalog. You can enable the option to have metadata saved automatically, or you can use a command to do so manually.
More Detail: By default, all metadata updates you apply in Lightroom Classic are only saved to the catalog, not to the source images on your hard drive. If you save metadata updates to the source photos, you can view the applicable metadata in other applications, such as Adobe Bridge. Doing so also provides a backup of some of the key metadata in the event your catalog was ever lost or corrupted.
I prefer to enable the option to have metadata updates saved to the source images automatically. To do so, bring up the Catalog Settings dialog by going to the menu and choosing Edit > Catalog Settings on Windows or Lightroom Classic > Catalog Settings on Macintosh. Go to the Metadata tab and turn on the “Automatically write changes into XMP”. If you don’t want to enable this automatic option, you can still save metadata manually by selecting the images you want to save metadata for and then going to the menu and choosing Metadata > Save Metadata to Files.
For proprietary raw captures the metadata updates will be saved in an XMP sidecar file, which will have the same base filename as the raw original but with a filename extension of .xmp. For other image formats the metadata updates will be saved directly to the source image file.
It is important to keep in mind that saving metadata to the source images will not preserve all information in Lightroom Classic. For example, collections, virtual copies, and the history in the Develop module are not saved in this manner. However, most of the updates you apply in Lightroom Classic are included when you save the metadata to the source images.
