Ask Tim Grey

Today’s Question: I have enabled the option to show “address suggestions” showing the name of location based on GPS metadata for my photos. But how do I take those suggestions and make them permanent? When I click in a field such as “City” the suggestion disappears.

Tim’s Quick Answer: You can make address suggestions for location metadata permanent by clicking on the label for the metadata field and clicking the suggestion on the popup that appears. Note that you can also have this information automatically added to copies of photos upon export.

More Detail: For photos with GPS coordinates embedded in metadata you can have Lightroom Classic display the city, state, and country (as applicable) as metadata suggestions. That information can then be made permanent for your source photos if you’d like and can also be included automatically in exported copies of photos that include those location suggestions.

To see the address suggestions in the first place you need to enable the feature in the Catalog Settings dialog. Start by choosing Edit > Catalog Settings from the menu on Windows or Lightroom Classic > Catalog Settings on Macintosh. On the Metadata tab of the Catalog Settings dialog turn on the “Look up city, state and country of GPS coordinates to provide address suggestions” checkbox. If you want to be able to include those suggestions in metadata automatically when exporting photos you need to also turn on the “Export address suggestions whenever address fields are empty” checkbox.

If you want to make the address suggestions permanent for a photo browse the location metadata, which you can get to quickly by choosing Location from the popup to the left of the Metadata heading on the right panel in the Library module. Address suggestions will appear as italic text in the various fields, such as City, State, and Country/Region. To apply a metadata value permanently click on the label to the left of the field (such as “City”) and click on the address suggestion text in the popup that appears.

Even if you have not made address suggestions permanent in the metadata for photos, you can still include the address suggestions in metadata for exported copies for your photos. As noted above, you’ll first need to turn on the applicable checkbox in the Catalog Settings dialog. You’ll then need to choose “All Metadata” from the Include popup in the Metadata section of the Export dialog, and make sure that the “Remove Location Info” checkbox is turned off.

Today’s Question: You’ve explained in the past that problems can occur in Lightroom Classic if you make changes to the color label definitions after you’ve already assigned color labels to your photos. Does the same issue exist for changing the definitions for color labels for folders and collections? In other words, is it safe to change the color label definitions for folders and collections as long as I don’t change them for photos?

Tim’s Quick Answer: No, there is no problem at all with changing the definitions for color labels for folders or collections. In fact, updating those definitions can be helpful in your workflow.

More Detail: Lightroom Classic includes the ability to assign color labels to folders and collections, which can be helpful for a variety of workflow purposes. For example, I use a red color label to flag folders that contain photos I still need to review. If you change the definitions of the color labels for folders and collections to reflect the reasons you are using those color labels, you can make it easier to assign the correct color label for the correct purpose to a folder or collection.

The default color label definitions in Lightroom Classic use the name of the color as the term used for the label. So, for example, a red color label has the word “Red” associated with it. In the context of a folder or collection that means if you right-click on a folder, for example, and choose “Add Color Label to Folder” from the popup menu, the submenu will show “Red” at the top of the list.

However, you could update the definition for the red color label for folders to say something like “Review Needed” so that on that popup menu you would see “Review Needed” rather than “Red”. This can make it easier to select the correct color label for the intended purpose.

Making changes to color labels for folders or collections won’t cause any problems with existing color labels you’ve assigned to folders or collections. The same isn’t true for photos because the term defined for a color label at the time it is assigned is added to metadata to the photo, so that if you change the definitions for color labels for photos that metadata would no longer match.

To change the definitions for color labels for folders or collections first go to the Library module and from the menu choose Metadata > Color Label Set > Edit. In the Edit Color Label Set dialog go to the tab for Folders or Collections and update the definitions for each color label based on your workflow preference. Click the Change button and the updates will be applied.

Today’s Question: When using the Spot Removal tool in Lightroom Classic to clean up blemishes in a photo, I always use the Heal option. Is there any reason I should ever consider the Clone option?

Tim’s Quick Answer: In most cases the Heal option for the Spot Removal tool in Lightroom Classic is the best option. I would only use the Clone setting when you find that the blending from the Heal option is causing unwanted artifacts. However, in those situations I would also strongly consider sending the image to Photoshop for further image cleanup work rather than dealing with the limitations related to image cleanup in Lightroom Classic.

More Detail: The key difference between the Clone and Heal options for the Spot Removal tool is that with the Clone option pixels are copied from source to destination without being altered, while with the Heal option the pixels are blended to better match the destination area.

In most cases the Heal option for the Spot Removal tool provides a good result, blending the source pixels into the destination area so they match more accurately. You can always move the source and/or destination area for a given cleanup area to help ensure a better match.

However, in some cases the helpful behavior of the Heal setting can lead to problematic artifacts caused by the nature of the blending. In those cases you may want to use the Clone option to perform a basic replacement of the blemish by directly copying pixels from a different area of the image. You can then use the Heal option to apply additional separate cleanup work to help the original cleanup area blend more smoothly into the surrounding area.

In most cases where the Heal option isn’t providing an adequate solution, I would recommend instead sending the image to Photoshop so you can take advantage of the Content-Aware technology that is more widely available within Photoshop. Hopefully at some point Lightroom Classic will include the same (or similar) technology to improve the power of the Spot Removal tool, but until then I consider Photoshop an important tool for image cleanup for Lightroom Classic users.

Today’s Question: When I switch to browsing a different folder the filter I’ve set (often star ratings) is reset, so that I’m seeing all photos in the new folder. Is there a way to keep the filter settings active when I switch to a different folder?

Tim’s Quick Answer: Yes, you can lock the current filter criteria with the small padlock icon at the top-right of the Library Filter bar, so that the filter criteria will remain active when you navigate to a different folder or collection.

More Detail: By default, when you navigate to a different folder or collection in Lightroom Classic any filter criteria you have established will be removed, so that you are browsing all photos in the new location. Fortunately, you can change this behavior so that the filter criteria are locked.

The lock option is found at the top-right of the Library Filter bar above the grid view display in the Library module. If you don’t see the Library Filter bar simply press the backslash key (\) to reveal the filter bar. At the top-right you can click the padlock icon to toggle the status. The icon is a bit small and therefore a little difficult to see the difference, but the padlock icon shows open when the filter is unlocked and closed when the filter is locked.

Let’s assume, for example, that you have set a filter based on star ratings above a certain number. If the filter lock is turned off, then navigating to a different folder will cause the filter to reset to “None” so that you’re able to see all photos in the new location. If the filter lock is turned on, when you navigate to a different folder or collection the filter criteria will remain active.

I personally prefer to always keep the filter lock enabled, so that filter criteria won’t change regardless of which folder or collection I navigate to. If I want to see all photos again I set the filter to “None” rather than unlocking the filter. I can then select the desired attributes again when I want to re-enable the filter criteria.

Today’s Question: I saw your response to a question on removing color cast from old family photos and was wondering if a similar inverted color mask technique could be used for removing the orange mask (or its inverse) from scanned color negatives.

Tim’s Quick Answer: There is actually a “Color Negative” preset in the Curves adjustment for Photoshop that works pretty well. You could, however, use a variation on my technique for correcting for a strong color cast by sampling the film border around the frame of the image.

More Detail: Color negative film employs various dyes to produce the final colors in a photograph. Due to the balance of the dyes used, an orange color tint would appear in the negative. Many film scanners are able to compensate for this automatically, but if you are using a digital camera to digitize the negatives the color will generally remain, with a blue appearance if you have inverted the negative to a positive image.

The Curves adjustment in Photoshop includes a “Color Negative” option on the Preset popup, which generally does a good job of both inverting the image and compensating for the orange mask.

In addition, you could employ a variation of a technique I described in a previous answer that was focused on correcting for strong color casts in faded photos.

In the case of a negative you would want to sample a color from the frame that represents the unexposed film. You could use the Eyedropper tool in Photoshop to sample this color. Then create a new image layer on the Layers panel and fill it with the color you sampled by choosing Edit > Fill from the menu and choosing “Foreground Color” from the Contents popup. Make sure the Mode is set to Normal and that the Opacity is at 100% and click OK to apply the color fill.

Next, invert the color for this new “color fix” layer by choosing Image > Adjustments > Invert. Then change the blend mode for this layer to “Color” using the popup at the top-left of the Layers panel that has a default value of “Normal”. Finally, reduce the Opacity for this layer to around 50% using the popup slider at the top-right of the Layers panel.

As with the technique for compensating for a strong color cast in a faded photo, with this technique you’ll still need to apply other adjustments to refine the image to look its best. That would likely include, for example, adjustments to color saturation and contrast. However, with one of the two techniques covered here you should be able to get the color looking good even with the influence of the color mask from the color negative original.

You can find my technique for correcting for a strong color cast in a faded photo on my Ask Tim Grey blog here:

https://asktimgrey.com/2022/06/24/strong-color-cast-removal/

Today’s Question: Is there a point in the life of a monitor when it is too old to calibrate? I’ve had my Apple Thunderbolt display for more than 10 years, and I wonder sometimes (even though I get affirming feedback when I ask another photographer if my image color looks right).

Tim’s Quick Answer: For a modern LCD display the only indication that the display should not be relied upon for evaluating photos is if the display can’t be calibrated. That would generally mean that the display has gotten too dim, rather than having any issue with color fidelity.

More Detail: Back in the days of big and heavy CRT monitors there was a point that the monitor would get too old and no longer be able to present color accurately. The primary issue is that over time as the color display faded the three colors would not fade evenly. Eventually the three colors were so far from each other in terms of their full-strength potential that accurate color became impossible. This would be clearly indicated during the calibration process using a colorimeter.

With LCD displays that color fidelity issue is essentially not an issue. The more common issue is that the illumination source for the display starts to dim over time. Eventually the display may get so dim that you can’t accurately display bright tonal values. This too would be indicated during the process of calibrating the display.

As long as the display can be properly calibrated there’s no need to replace the display. In my experience most monitor displays get replaced because the photographer wants a display with higher resolution, larger size, or other feature benefits, rather than because the existing display could no longer be calibrated properly.

By the way, the display calibration requires a colorimeter device that measures the actual performance of the display. I recommend the Calibrite ColorChecker Display, which you can learn more about here:

https://timgrey.me/calibrite

Today’s Question: I migrated all my files from my old iMac to my new Studio Mac. In Lightroom Classic I opened my old catalog and while I have all my photos and star ratings, the color labels have disappeared. Instead, for those photos that had color labels, in the grid view there is a white square in the lower right of the frame. What did I do wrong?

Tim’s Quick Answer: This is simply an indication that the color label definitions don’t match those that were used to assign color labels to the affected image. All you need to do is update the color label definitions in Lightroom Classic to get the original colors back.

More Detail: While the color labels you can assign to images with various photo-management software applications are simple in concept, they aren’t quite as simple as they appear. When you assign a color label you aren’t actually assigning a color, but rather text in metadata.

The software looks at the text in the Label field in metadata, and compares that to the color label definitions, displaying the applicable color. In some cases, it is possible to alter the definitions used for the text associated with each color label, which can lead to confusion if there is a mismatch. Photos that have text in the Label field that don’t match a color label definition will appear with a white color label.

The first step in this case is to determine which color label definitions had been used previously. While browsing some of the photos that show a white color label go to the Library Filter in the grid view display within the Library module. On the Metadata tab browse the Label column, selecting the option from the popup on a column header if it isn’t currently displayed.

The Label column will then display all metadata values for the Label field for the photos you are currently browsing. The default definitions for Lightroom Classic are quite straightforward, being Red, Yellow, Green, Blue, and Purple. In Adobe Bridge the defaults are less meaningful, being Select, Second, Approved, Review, and To Do.

My assumption is that you’ll see an indication of one of these two color label sets when browsing the Label column on the Library Filter bar. Or you may recall that you had previously used a different definition. In any event, in Lightroom Classic you can go to the menu and choose Metadata > Color Label Set > Edit to bring up a dialog where you can select a Preset for the color labels or enter your own custom values to match what had been used previously.

For example, perhaps on your previous computer you had set Lightroom Classic to use the Bridge Default preset, but on the new computer the setting is at the default of Lightroom Default. Once you update the color label definitions in Lightroom Classic the applicable colors you were expecting based on the color labels you had previously applied will be magically restored.

Today’s Question: I keep my photos and their edits on an external hard drive and would like to back them up to a second external drive. What is the best way to do that? I’m using Lightroom Classic.

Tim’s Quick Answer: There are two basic options I would recommend here. For an ongoing backup that you’ll update regularly I recommend using software such as GoodSync (http://timgrey.me/greybackup) to create a synchronized backup of the external hard drive. For a one-time backup you could also use the “Export as Catalog” command to back up the catalog and photos in one process.

More Detail: For backing up photos (or other important data) on an external hard drive I recommend creating a backup that is an exact match of the source data. This approach makes it much easier to recover from a hard drive failure or other data loss compared to other approaches to backing up data. I use and recommend GoodSync software (http://timgrey.me/greybackup) for this purpose. With GoodSync you can define a backup job that will maintain a backup that is an exact copy of the source data, which you run periodically to keep that backup updated.

If the Lightroom Classic catalog is stored on the internal hard drive rather than an external hard drive then the catalog obviously won’t be backed up as part of a job with GoodSync created for an external hard drive. Regardless of where the catalog is stored, I recommend using the built-in backup feature in Lightroom Classic to back up the catalog, in part because doing so enables you to perform error-checking on the catalog and optimize the catalog as part of the overall purpose. You could set Lightroom Classic to store those backups on the external hard drive with the photos so that the backup would also get backed up as part of your workflow for backing up the photos.

Another option if you wanted to create a one-time backup for some purpose would be to use the “Export as Catalog” command. Start by going to the “All Photographs” collection in the Catalog section of the left panel in the Librarty module. Make sure there are no filters set for the photos, and then choose Edit > Select None from the menu so that no photos are selected.

You can then choose File > Export as Catalog from the menu. Navigate to the storage location where you want to create this backup, making sure there is enough space on that drive for the photos and the catalog. You can give the backup a name in the “Save As” field. Also, make sure the “Export negative files” checkbox, which will cause the photos to be copied along with the catalog copy you’re creating as part of this process.

In general, I would say there are very few scenarios where you need to use the “Export as Catalog” command to back up your photos, though it is a helpful option for creating a backup of both the catalog and all photos. Generally, I recommend simply using software such as GoodSync to back up your photos and other important data. You can learn more about GoodSync here:

http://timgrey.me/greybackup

Today’s Question: When I use the Command+Delete keyboard shortcut [Ctrl+Delete on Windows], the dialog pops up and only lets me remove photos from Lightroom Classic and not from the hard drive. How can I fix this?

Tim’s Quick Answer: If the “Delete from Disk” option is not included in the confirmation dialog when removing a photo that is an indication that either the source file is not currently available, or you have selected a virtual copy for removal.

More Detail: When you use one of the commands in Lightroom Classic that enables you to remove photos, such as “Remove Photo” or “Delete Rejected Photos”, a confirmation dialog will appear. I recommend selecting the “Delete from Disk” option if you want to discard the image, so that you’re not leaving the source file on the hard drive when removing the image from your Lightroom Classic catalog. However, this option won’t always be available in the confirmation dialog.

If you have selected a virtual copy for removal, you won’t see the “Delete from Disk” option in the confirmation dialog because there isn’t a file on the hard drive to remove. A virtual copy is an additional version of an image that references the original, so if you remove a virtual copy you still have the original image available.

If the source image is not currently available, you also won’t see the “Delete from Disk” option because the file can’t be deleted if it isn’t currently available. This would be the case, for example, if the external hard drive containing the source image isn’t currently connected to the computer.

In the case where the source image is not currently available, I recommend choosing the Cancel button in the confirmation dialog and then remove the photo when the source file is available. For example, connect the hard drive that contains the image, then choose the Remove Photo command again, so that the “Delete from Disk” option will be available.

Today’s Question: I just got back from a trip with a few hundred NEF images from my Nikon Z6. I have developed them all and am trying to sort the exported JPEG copies by the date the photo was taken. However, the metadata indicates that the “captured date” is the date I exported the developed image from Lightroom Classic, not the date the photo was taken. The date on the NEF file is correct. When I look back at other vacations, this is not the case. The developed and exported JPEG inherited the date of the original NEF. What setting has changed? How to do I get the JPEGs to inherit the capture date from the source file?

Tim’s Quick Answer: In order for an exported copy of a photo to inherit the metadata from the original (including capture time) you need to select the “All Metadata” option when exporting from Lightroom Classic.

More Detail: When you export a copy of a photo from Lightroom Classic that copy can inherit the metadata from the original image, including all standard metadata fields such as capture date and time, keywords, star ratings, and more. However, that metadata is only included if you select the appropriate option in the Export dialog.

In the Metadata section of the Export dialog you’ll find various options related to the metadata that should be included in the exported copy you’re creating from the original image. To begin with, if you want to include as much metadata as possible in the exported copy you’ll want to select “All Metadata” from the Include popup.

The other options on the Include popup will cause various metadata values to be excluded from the exported copy of the image, including the date and time of capture.

In addition to the popup there are two checkboxes that enable you to exclude certain metadata from the exported copies of the photos. Even with “All Metadata” selected from the Include popup if you turn on the “Remove Person Info” checkbox then keywords that have the “Person” checkbox turned on will be excluded from the metadata for the exported copy of the image. Similarly, if you turn on the “Remove Location Info” then location information such as GPS coordinates will be excluded from the metadata for the exported image.