10 Managing your photos in Lightroom

How to use the metadata tools in Lightroom to manage your catalogs

Photograph: Ocean concrete works, Vancouver, Canada © 2018 Martin Evening

Sony A7rII | 50mm | ISO 200 | f/8 @ 1/200

Here is a quick test for you: Can you remember all the things you photographed last month? Were there any particular shots that stood out? Okay, so how about that same month five years ago? Many photographers think they can successfully rely on their memory when accessing pictures from their photo archives. The fact is, as we shoot more and more photographs, this kind of approach is doomed to failure, and as time goes by, it will only get worse.

Lightroom can help you organize and catalog your images from the very first moment you import them. It provides a flexible system of file management that can free you from the rigid process of having to organize your images within system folders.

On the face of it, image management might seem like a chore, but the time you invest now in rating your photos and adding custom metadata, such as keywords, can easily bring its own rewards and justify the time spent doing this. Adding custom metadata to your photos will add value. For working photographers, this can mean adding commercial value by making such photos more easily accessible to someone carrying out a keyword search. Even adding just a minimal amount of metadata to your personal photos can help prevent precious photographs of friends, family, and places visited from being lost among an ever-growing catalog of images.

At the heart of any digital asset management (DAM) system is the ability to manage the files stored on that system through the use of metadata. A good DAM system should allow you to filter files using the metadata that is already embedded, as well as add custom metadata tags that can be used to carry out refined file searches and organize files into custom groupings. Some examples have already been shown in this book, such as how the Filmstrip filter can narrow down a selection of photos and display only those images with ratings of one star or higher, or two stars or higher, and so on. We have also looked at how to use the Folders panel to manage the image library. But the real power behind Lightroom is the database engine, which lets you carry out specific searches and quickly find the photos you are looking for. Figure 10.1 shows an example of metadata applied to a personal photograph, while Figure 10.2 shows an example of metadata applied to a commercial photograph.

It is in no way mandatory that you follow all the advice offered in this chapter, as everyone will have their own particular image-management requirements. You may find you just want to use the Folders panel to catalog your library images, and that is enough to satisfy your needs. But, hopefully, one of the key things you will learn in this chapter is that the time invested in cataloging an image collection can pay huge dividends in terms of the time saved when tracking down those pictures later. The image-management tools in Lightroom are far from being a complete asset-management solution, but they do offer something for nearly everyone. Some may find the cataloging tools in Lightroom insufficient. But even so, the data you input via Lightroom will be fully accessible in other image-asset-management programs. Once you start adding metadata to your images and grasp the benefits of doing so, you’ll soon reap the rewards.

Lightroom also lets you organize your image files by metadata. All digital image files will contain a certain amount of camera data (known as EXIF metadata) to describe such things as the camera and lens used, along with other technical information, such as the lens settings and image file type. The thing is, the information that we would consider most important, such as who or what was in the picture when the photograph was shot, cannot be included automatically (although the Lightroom People feature can sometimes help). For the most part, photographers have to add such custom metadata information manually by entering keywords that describe the image. Keywords can be used to categorize the photos in your catalog, and if you are skilled at keywording, this can really help you manage your photos efficiently, as well as improve sales if you are in the business of supplying photos to an agency.

It is true that you will need to spend time entering all this metadata information, although there are various tips coming up in this chapter that will show you how to avoid repetitively entering this data for every single image. The trade-off is that the time invested in cataloging your images in the early stages can help reap rewards later in the time saved retrieving your files. In most cases, you need to configure essential metadata only once to create a custom metadata template. You can then apply this bulk metadata automatically to a set of imported photos. You can take the metadata cataloging further and add extensive custom metadata information to individual images. It all depends whether this is important for the type of work you do. Basically, the amount of effort spent adding metadata should always be proportional to how useful that information may be later. There is no point in going overboard doing this. How much time you should devote to this task and the amount of detailed information you record will all come down to how important that information will be to you personally and/or the people you are supplying your images to.

There is a lot of detailed content coming up in this chapter about how to apply, edit, and use metadata. Therefore, I thought the best way to introduce this subject would be to provide a quick example of how metadata can be used to carry out a search of the Lightroom catalog.

1. Let me start by showing how you can search for photos quickly, without needing to refer to the folders the images are kept in. In the example, I selected all of the photos in the catalog and used (Mac) or (PC) to reveal the Library Filter bar with the Text search field activated. Here, I typed “elephant” and I allowed the search to search within Any Searchable Field using Contains All search criteria. This filtered the catalog view to reveal 271 images with a text match for “elephant.” This could be wherever there was a match in a keyword, caption, or filename. A filtered selection of 271 images was obviously a lot easier to sort through than a search of the entire catalog, but there are ways you can use Lightroom to further narrow down a search.

2. I then clicked the Attribute tab in the Filter bar and clicked the one-star button to narrow the search to elephant images with a rating of one star or higher. This reduced the selection to a more manageable 59 images.

3. Lastly, I clicked the Metadata tab in the Filter bar and, in the Date column, clicked to select just those images that were shot in 2010. I also clicked the three-star button to display just those images with a rating of three stars or higher.

The Location panel mode provides a metadata view that is more useful for reviewing travel photographs. The Minimal and Quick Describe view modes are suited for compact Metadata panel viewing, such as when working on a small screen or laptop. And the DNG mode reveals specifics about the DNG data for selected DNG images. This lets you see specific DNG file information, such as whether lossy compression has been applied.

In Figure 10.8, you can see Grid view showing a master DNG image with two virtual copies to the right (see the page curl-icons circled in the bottom-left corners). The one on the right was renamed Black and white.

Next to Date Time Original is the Go to Date action button (this applies only to digital capture images). Clicking this button filters the catalog view to show only those photos that have matching capture dates. To exit this filter view, use the (Mac) or (PC) shortcut, which toggles the catalog filters on or off.

If you know that the camera time and date settings are incorrect, you can address this by choosing Metadata Edit Capture Time while working in the Library module. The Edit Capture Time dialog (Figure 10.13) lets you amend the Date Time Original setting for an individual image or a group of images.

If you find out too late that the date and time are wrong, the Edit Capture Time feature can help you restore the correct time to your captures. If you are editing the capture time for a selection of images, the “Adjust to a specified date and time” option lets you set the date for the current most selected image (the one shown in the dialog preview) and the remaining selected images will all reset their dates and time relative to this image. If the internal camera clock is correct but you simply forgot to adjust the camera clock to a new time zone, you might want to select the “Shift by set number of hours (time zone adjust)” option and adjust for any time-zone difference. At the bottom of the dialog, there is a warning that “This operation cannot be undone.” However, if you later go to the Metadata menu in Lightroom, you can choose Revert Capture Time to Original. This allows you to reset the capture time metadata. Also, the “Change to file creation date for each image” option allows you to change the capture time for the capture time setting in the camera EXIF data back to the original creation date.

When you use the Edit Capture Time dialog to edit the original capture time settings for raw files, the changes made are applied to the XMP data only. If you go to the Metadata tab in the Lightroom Catalog Settings and go to the EXIF section at the bottom, you will see the option “Write data or time changes into proprietary raw files.” When this is checked, it lets you hardwire date changes into the EXIF field contained in the proprietary raw file (as opposed to simply writing to the XMP space). It is not normal practice to risk editing the internal metadata fields of undocumented proprietary raw files, so use with caution. The reason for having this preference is that when some workflows rely on external programs, it may be necessary to edit the EXIF field inside the actual raw file (for example, you may need to externally synchronize the raw files with a GPS log).

Embedding your name as the owner in the camera settings seems like a pretty good idea. This ensures the copyright name is always embedded in the capture file EXIF data. Just remember that if you borrow someone else’s camera or rent one, always check what the owner name metadata says. Once the owner metadata is embedded in the raw capture files, you will not be able to edit the EXIF data that easily. If you are feeling brave, it can be changed using an EXIF editor, such as ExifTool by Phil Harvey (sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool), but this is a command line-based editor and not particularly easy to use. While you can’t edit the Artist EXIF field directly, you can use Lightroom to edit the IPTC Creator field, which will work superficially because the two fields are linked in Lightroom.

Figure 10.15 shows the Metadata panel in the IPTC view mode. You can see here that I have filled in the editable sections with examples of how you might use this panel to add descriptive information to a photo. You could, for example, select all the photos in a particular folder from the same shoot and add custom information to categorize them. Most of the items in this panel, such as Creator, Job Title, and Address, are self-explanatory, and this is data you would probably want to apply to nearly every photo. However, the Headline and Caption fields can be used to add image-specific information. The Headline field might be used to describe a photo shoot, such as Xmas catalog shoot 2018, or White-on-white fashion shoot, while the Caption field can be used to provide a brief description of a scene, such as Crowds line the streets at local festival to celebrate the Chinese New Year. These custom bits of information are essential when submitting images to a picture library, and they are particularly useful when you take into account that the value of an individual image is increased as more information is added. Even with a small-scale setup, you’ll find it rewarding to methodically catalog your photographs with basic metadata information in the Contact and other IPTC sections.

Metadata presets provide a useful way to batch-apply informational metadata either at the import stage or later via the Metadata panel. You might therefore find it useful to create several metadata templates for the different types of shoots you normally do. Let’s say you are a sports photographer and are often required to photograph the home football team whenever the team plays a game at the local stadium. You could save yourself a lot of time by creating a template with the name of the football team and the location information and apply this template every time you photograph a home game. Even though the Lightroom Metadata panel cannot display all the items that can be included in a Metadata preset, other programs may be able to do so.

It is not mandatory all the listed fields be completed; just fill in as many as you find useful. For example, the IPTC Content section can be used to enter headline information and details of who wrote the description. The Description Writer field refers to the person who entered the metadata information: This might be a picture library editor, a photographer’s assistant, or a work colleague. This type of information is not something that you would necessarily want to add as part of a metadata preset. However, the IPTC Copyright section can list information about who owns the copyright plus Rights Usage Terms. The IPTC Creator section can also contain contact details such as your address, telephone, email, and website. This information will most likely remain the same until you move or change email accounts. The IPTC Image section allows you to enter information that is more specific to the image, such as the intellectual genre. The remaining fields can be used to describe when and where the photograph was shot, job reference (such as a client art order), and so on.

Once you are done, you can save this template as a new metadata preset and apply it whenever you import new images into the catalog. Essentially, metadata presets are available and editable via the Import Photos dialog. You therefore have the choice of applying metadata presets either at the import stage or via the Metadata panel Preset menu. This way, you can ensure that after each new import, all newly added photos carry complete copyright and contact information (Figure 10.19).

In Figure 10.18, you will notice I did not enter data into all the fields, and for those that were empty, I deliberately left the check boxes deselected. This is because a selected check box is saying “Change me.” When you create a metadata preset, you will often want to devise a preset that is general enough to cover certain types of shoots but without including terms that will make a preset too specific. Also, if you create a metadata preset that is designed to add metadata to specific IPTC fields, you may not want to overwrite any of the other fields that contain important metadata.

When a field in the Edit Metadata Presets dialog is checked but left blank, its description will turn red. The placeholder text in the field will say “Type to add, leave blank to clear,” reminding you that if you select the box and do not add any text, it will act as an eraser, deleting any data for that field. Let’s say I had an image where the Caption, Color Label, and Rating information had already been added. If I applied the metadata preset shown in Figure 10.18 but with all the boxes checked, it would overwrite these existing metadata settings with null content, thereby erasing the Caption, Color Label, and Rating data. So, when you create a new preset, it is always worth confirming that you select only those items that you intend to change; otherwise, your metadata presets can soon start messing up the photos in the catalog rather than enhancing them. Of course, you can always edit an existing preset and deliberately set the preset to erase older metadata if you think that would be useful. Configure these presets carefully, and always test them to make sure they behave exactly as you expect them to.

If you photograph people, you can record specific model information such as the age of the model, which might be particularly relevant if the subject was a minor when the photo was shot. You can also provide a summary of the current model release status. The same thing applies to photographs of private properties where, under some circumstances, a property release may be required.

Fortunately, this process is made a lot easier in Lightroom. Figure 10.20 shows a Library Grid view of photographs that were taken at a model casting. I tend to shoot model castings with the camera tethered to the computer and update the Caption field with the model’s name and model agency as I go along. In Figure 10.20, you can see that the Caption field is currently active and I have typed in the model’s details. Instead of pressing to commit this data entry, I could use the key (Mac) or key (PC), and a Right or Left Arrow to progress to the next or previous image. This step commits the text entry and takes you directly to the next photo. It also keeps the metadata field active so you are now ready to carry on typing in new information for the next selected photo.

However, if Show Metadata for Target Photo Only is selected in the Metadata menu (Figure 10.22), the Metadata panel display will look like the version shown in Figure 10.23, which displays the metadata information for the most selected or target photo only, even though you may have more than one photo selected.

To show you how this feature might be used, in Figure 10.24, I selected all of the photos from a folder in the catalog. The Metadata panel displayed the information for the photo that was the most highlighted (the target photo). By using the + Arrow keys (Mac) or + Arrow keys (PC), I was able to navigate from one photo to the next without deselecting the active photo selection and read the metadata information for each individual image as I did so.

With the Show Metadata for Target Photo Only mode, the one thing you need to be aware of is that you will now only be able to edit the metadata on a per-image basis. This is a good thing, because it means that you can keep an image selection active and edit the metadata for each of the individual photos without losing the selection. However, many people will be accustomed to making image selections and then using the Metadata panel to edit the settings globally. So, just be aware that although this menu item can prove useful, you probably will not want to have it enabled all the time, as it could lead to confusion if you forgot this option was switched on.

Similarly, clicking the action button next to the Website field launches the default web browser program and takes you directly to that website. The Website field can be used to enter your usual website address. But if you wanted to, you could use this field to enter a URL that takes people to a specific page on your website. For example, you could direct people to a specific web page informing people of the types of rights that are available for certain types of images. For instance, I could broadly divide the photos in my catalog collection as photos that have been exclusively licensed, those that have non-exclusive licenses (and are available for purchase), and those that are not for sale.

When viewing a photo using the IPTC Metadata panel view, the action arrow next to the Copyright Info URL takes you directly to the website link entered into the accompanying Copyright URL field.

I highly recommend that, wherever appropriate, you mark all your images as being copyrighted. You can do this by applying a metadata preset during the import process (see Chapter 2). Unfortunately, marking an image as being copyrighted will not fully protect it from becoming an orphan work. For example, if you upload your images to certain social networking sites, the copyright tag is automatically stripped, so beware. For advice on how to format a copyright notice, go to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/copyright_notice.

You can add keyword metadata via the Import Photos dialog as you import your images. The Figure 10.29 example shows relevant keywords being added to the Keywords field, which would then be applied to all the photos as they are imported. Lightroom can auto-complete keywords if it recognizes that the word you are typing might already belong to the keyword list.

Or, you can add or edit the keywords at any time via the Keywording panel (Figure 10.30). However, I’ll first organize my keywords in the Keyword List panel into a hierarchy of keyword categories (also referred to as a controlled vocabulary). For example, in the Keyword List panel Places keyword category, I have a keyword subcategory called Europe. In Figure 10.30, I clicked in the highlighted Enter Keywords field (where it says “Click here to add keywords“) to add keywords to an image. In this instance, I wanted to add a subcategory of Europe titled Norway, and within that a subcategory: Bygdøy peninsula. The full keyword path here was: Bygdøy peninsula < Norway < Europe < Places. The keyword metadata is always entered in this hierarchical order, placing the child keyword before the parent. You will find that it pays to establish a proper keyword hierarchy that suits the content of your library and give some careful thought as to how you wish to structure a controlled vocabulary. For example, also included here were other keywords such as Seascapes < Nature subjects and Boats < Transportation.

Keywords can be used to describe anything you like. But do not forget that there are also IPTC fields that can and should be used to enter data, such as the location where a photo was shot. While keywords provide a single place for entering informational data, the fields in the IPTC data section are regarded as the formally correct place for entering such data. If you sell photos for a living, it makes sense to follow industry conventions and make sure you also fill out these sections rather than rely solely on keywording to do this.

You can add keywords by clicking the plus button in the Keyword List panel, which is circled in Figure 10.31. And here, you can see I also right-clicked on the Norway keyword to reveal the context menu and chose Create Keyword Tag inside Norway. This opened the Create Keyword Tag dialog (Figure 10.32), where I added Bygdøy peninsula as a child of Norway.

When you roll over a keyword in the Keyword List panel, a check box appears to the left of the keyword. If you click this box, it adds a check mark and the keyword is added to the selected image or images (Figure 10.33). If you click the arrow to the right of the keyword count number, Lightroom filters the catalog to show all photos that share the same keyword.

If need be, you can use the Keyword List panel to manually edit the keyword list hierarchy, remove keywords that are no longer applicable, or create new hierarchy groupings. After a keyword has been added to the Lightroom keyword list, Lightroom will auto-complete keywords as you start typing in the first few letters for a new keyword entry. Apart from making it quicker to enter new data, this helps you avoid duplicating keyword entries through careless spelling or typos. Lightroom also auto-assigns the correct hierarchy. For example, the next time I might choose to add the keyword Seascapes, the Seascapes keyword will be automatically applied to the image using the Seascapes < Nature subjects keyword path (Figure 10.34). I will be coming back to this point later, but basically when you enter a keyword, Lightroom is able to auto-complete the keyword and at the same time knows to assign the correct keyword hierarchy. The only problem that can arise here is when a single keyword can have more than one context and therefore appears listed in more than one hierarchy.

Imagine you were in the business of supplying photographic location services to clients. Figure 10.35 shows an example of an image of a holiday property, for which you might want to keep the location metadata hidden. After all, it would not be in your interests to include the exact location details within the metadata. If you use the Export dialog to export your photos, you can select the Remove Location Info box in the Metadata section to remove all GPS and IPTC location metadata. Similarly, you can also select the Remove Person Info box to exclude including People keywords (I’ll be discussing People keywords later on page 592).

In the Figure 10.36 example, the keyword car uses the following hierarchy: car < automobile < land transportation < TRANSPORTATION. Because Export Containing Keywords is selected, when any file using this keyword is exported, the full keyword hierarchy will be included. However, there are other search terms that people might want to use when searching for cars, such as auto, motor, or vehicle. These can be added as synonyms. Consequently, any image that’s tagged using the single keyword car will be discoverable using any of the following search terms: car, automobile, land transportation, transportation, auto, motor, or vehicle. The benefit of using synonyms is that they allow you to include more potential keyword search terms within a single keyword in the keyword list, but without cluttering up the entire list with lots of different keywords that are essentially variations of a single keyword term. When creating keywords for locations, if it is important that other people find your photos, there are good reasons to consider including foreign-language versions of a name in order to reach a maximum audience. For example, English speakers might search “Venice,” whereas the Italians will (correctly) search “Venezia.” When I was photographing in Scotland recently, many of the places I photographed had both English and Gaelic names. Therefore, the Gaelic versions might be suitable for inclusion as synonyms.

When you select an image in the Library module, you will see all keywords associated with the photo listed in the Keywording panel, each separated by a comma. If multiple images are selected, the Keywording panel displays all the keywords that are active in the image selection. Those keywords that are common to all images in the selection are displayed as normal, while those keywords that apply only to a subselection of the images will be appended with an asterisk (Figure 10.39). If you want to unify a particular keyword across all the selected images, simply highlight the asterisk and press the key. This ensures all the selected images are now assigned with that keyword. If you want to change a particular keyword, you can always highlight it and type in a new word or press to remove it completely from the selection.

Most of the time, auto-completion is a useful thing to have active. Sometimes, however, it can become a pain. For example, when I do a model casting and enter the names of models in the Caption field of the Metadata panel in the Library module, I don’t find auto-completion particularly helpful. What is useful with the Mac version is the ability to spell-check. The Edit Spelling submenu in the Library module contains the options Show Spelling and Grammar, Check Spelling, and Check Spelling as You Type. This can help you avoid mistakes as you add new metadata.

As photos are removed from the catalog, keywords that were formerly associated with those images will consequently become unused. You can remove these by selecting and deleting as I have just described, or clear them from the Keyword List panel. To do this, go to the Metadata menu and choose Purge Unused Keywords. Just so you don’t remove these keywords by accident, a warning dialog will ask you to confirm this action.

How you categorize library images is entirely up to you, but if you submit work to an external photo library, you will most likely be given guidelines on the acceptable keywords and categories to use when keywording photographs for submission. These guidelines are normally supplied privately to photographers who work directly with the picture agencies, but there are online resources you can refer to that describe how best to establish and work with a controlled vocabulary. These ensure the keyword terms you use to describe your images conform to prescribed sets of words that are universally used by others working in the same branch of the photo industry. When you get into complex keywording, it is important to be methodical and precise about which terms are used and the hierarchy they belong to.

Keyword categories can also be used to catalog images in ways that are helpful to your business. For commercial shoots, I find it is useful to keep a record of who has worked on which shot. Some catalog programs let you set up a custom database template with user-defined fields. In Lightroom, you can set up keyword categories for the various types of personnel and add the individual names as a subset (or child) of the parent keyword category. Figure 10.40 shows how I have created keyword categories for Clothes stylists, Hair stylists, and Makeup artists. Within these categories I created subcategories of keywords listing the people I have worked with regularly. As I start typing in someone’s name as a new keyword entry, if Lightroom recognizes this as a possible match to one of the existing keywords in the keyword database, it auto-completes the keyword metadata entry in addition to correctly placing the keyword within the established hierarchy. This type of organization is also useful for separating library images by job/client names. When the keyword names are in place, you should find it fairly easy to keep your catalog of images updated.

You can also use the Keyword List panel to filter the photos that appear in the content area. As you roll over a particular keyword, you will see an arrow appear next to the keyword count number. When you click the arrow, this displays all the photos in the Lightroom catalog containing that keyword, regardless of whatever photo filter view you have currently active.

When you enter a new keyword, you use the < key to signify that this keyword is a child of the following keyword (such as train < land transportation < Transportation). This establishes the hierarchy, and as I explained, when you use the Enter Keywords mode, all you will see is the first keyword, and the parent keywords will be hidden. However, if you apply a keyword that is identical to another keyword but both have different parents, you will then see the full keyword path hierarchy appear in the Keywording dialog. For example, in Figure 10.44, you have two options for the Keyword Camilla Pascucci, because I added the keyword Camilla Pascucci in two separate contexts. In one context, Camilla Pascucci is a makeup artist I work with, but she is also my wife (so she can also be listed as a subset of PEOPLE as someone I know). This is why when you type in certain keywords, you will sometimes see more than one keyword path suggestion. It also explains why, when after you press to okay the choice, you may see a full keyword path directory in the Keywording panel rather than a single keyword.

2. After you create a new custom keyword set, the keywords appear listed in the Metadata panel in the Keyword Set section. You can hold down the key to preview the keyboard shortcuts and use the key plus a number to quickly assign any of these keywords to selected photos.

If you have lots of photos to edit from a specific trip or you regularly photograph certain types of events, you may find it useful to create your own keyword sets for these types of shoots.

You can then select which type of settings you want to apply with the Painter tool. The Painter tool is ideal for those times when you may want to repeatedly apply a keyword or combination of keywords to photos in the Library module Grid view. You can do this by clicking with the Painter tool on a photo, or you can click and drag over a number of photos at once. But as well as that, you can use the Painter tool to paint using labels, flags, ratings, metadata, Develop settings, or rotation settings, as well as add to the target collection. You can also load keywords from any of your keyword sets. To do this, hold down the key with the Painter tool selected to pop open the keyword sets list, select a desired keyword set, and then click individual keywords to add these to the keyword painter list. In Keywords mode, you can enter more than one single keyword into the Paint field. You will also notice in the Keyword List panel that keywords entered this way will appear with a + sign next to them.

The Painter tool appearance varies according to which mode you have selected. Figure 10.49 shows examples of all the different styles. As you can see, there are lots of potential uses for this tool—not just applying keywords, but other tasks such as painting with a saved Develop setting. To undo a Painter tool–applied setting, you need to hold down the key as you click to switch to the Eraser mode (), which will undo a setting. Also keep in mind that you have to be careful to target the thumbnail and not just the cell area. For jobs where you are constantly applying the same instruction, like “rotate this photo 90 degrees” or “apply this set combination of keywords,” the Painter tool does have its uses, but it can often be much easier to just select the photos first and then apply a setting to all the photos in one step.

Before Lightroom can identify and recognize face shapes in each image, however, the photos in the catalog (or Filmstrip selection) must be indexed. During this stage, Lightroom builds a record of each image in a form that the face-recognition engine can use to detect and analyze faces in images. Indexing can be turned on for the whole catalog by checking the “Automatically detect faces in all photos” option in the Catalog Settings Metadata section, or you can click the Identity Plate to open the Activity Center and enable Face Detection. For photos that are currently offline, Lightroom automatically indexes them the next time they come back online and Lightroom is launched. If indexing is turned off, Lightroom indexes the selected source only when you enter the People view or you activate the Draw Face Region tool in the Loupe view for the current photo. For example, it can be useful to index faces for family and portrait photos of known people, but less so if you have photographs recording an event where there may be lots of unknown faces in a crowd. Therefore, it can pay to be selective about which photos you choose to index and those you don’t.

When the initial indexing is complete, you can click the People button in the Library module Toolbar to go to the People view mode (click again to toggle returning to the Grid view). Or, choose View People or use the shortcut. Once in the People view mode, Lightroom displays face thumbnails in the Unnamed People section showing all the possible face matches for that particular selection of images. If you hold down the key and pan the pointer over a face stack, it shows a preview of all the faces that are in that stack. From there, it is up to you to identify the faces and enter the names manually. As you identify each face, Lightroom will attempt to identify similar faces. You can then click to approve the name suggestions as being correct, or rename them correctly.

In Loupe view with the Draw Face Region tool active, face regions overlay each recognized face. For a photograph with a group of people, Lightroom will not just suggest the names of the people featured in the photo, but will identify each face individually. Lightroom seems mostly able to spot faces. On the other hand, it can still miss obvious matches, or incorrectly include all kinds of picture elements as faces, but you can always choose to delete the face region for such photos to remove them from the equation. In practice, you will have to decide whether the effort of all this training work is worth it compared to the manual method of visually identifying people and manually entering keywords. Ultimately, face-tagging requires a significant amount of user input in the early stages in order to familiarize Lightroom with the people you photograph most often. The more you use this feature, though, the easier it becomes for Lightroom to automatically recognize the people seen in your photographs and name and keyword them automatically.

You can monitor the indexing progress via the Activity Center. The indexing process involves reading the raw data from disk. Even if you happen to be doing something else that involves reading the raw data, such as converting to DNG, or building Smart Previews, the indexing process can happen simultaneously and get a free ride. Plus, the index will build faster if you have Smart Previews available. Failing that, if there are embedded previews that are sufficiently large enough (greater than 1024 pixels along the longest edge), Lightroom will use those. Face info search data is also included when importing from another catalog and when creating a virtual copy.

It is worth pointing out here that the underlying face-tagging engine in Lightroom has been significantly updated. The new face engine does a better job of picking up faces that the old engine might have missed and improves a little bit on detecting faces in profile. If you are working with a catalog that has already been face-indexed, Lightroom is able to re-index photographs that have existing face regions. These are the square overlays that appear in the Loupe view when the Draw Face Region button is activated in the Toolbar. The Face Regions are preserved while Lightroom recomputes the underlying face descriptor files that are used in face recognition. To initiate this, see the section below.

Newly imported photos are analyzed for both the face detection and face recognition stages (providing face indexing is turned on for the catalog and the face regions have not simply been imported from the XMP).

1. In the Library module, I switched to the People view by clicking the People view button. So far, Lightroom had recognized Georgia. I clicked to confirm and added her to the Named People section.

2. Here, I made a selection of matching faces in the Unnamed People section and clicked in the text field below (you can also use the shortcut to enter text) to identify Francesca as a new person and add her to the Named People section. Lightroom auto-completes as you type. When you are editing single faces, pressing automatically selects the next face and highlights the text field. You can also use (Mac)/ (PC) plus an Arrow key to progress from one face to the next.

3. Lightroom will very likely produce some false results. You can manage these by pressing , clicking the X button on the bottom of the thumbnail, or making a selection and using the context menu to select Remove Face Region.

4. Having begun to train Lightroom to recognize certain faces, I could hover over a face in the People view and click the cancel icon to reject and delete the face region or click the check mark icon to confirm the named-face suggestion and add this face to the Named People section.

5. Another way to manage faces in the Unnamed People section is to make a selection of faces and drag these across to a named face in the Named People section. This names the selected photos. You can also drag photos between sections to take, say, a photo from the Named People section and drag it to the Unnamed People section (where it will become Unnamed again).

6. At this point, I had carried out most of the naming, but there were still some thumbnails left over in the Unnamed People section.

7. Here, I double-clicked a named face to go to the Single Person view. You can also do this by clicking the keyword name that appears at the top (circled in Step 6). Lightroom suggests similar face suggestions in the Similar section below.

8. I then double-clicked a face in the Single Person view to switch to the Loupe view in the Library module to reveal the face regions, which as you can see, identifies individual faces and lets you confirm that keywords have been added.

Right-clicking a face in People view opens a context menu (Figure 10.52). You can use this to choose Find Similar Faces ( [Mac] or [PC]), Move to Unamed People, Remove Face Region, Go to Folder in Library, or Go to Collection (the collection that contains the photo). The Find Similar Faces item is great as a tool for getting Lightroom to quickly locate similar-looking people even if you haven’t had a chance to keyword or face-tag them yet.

You can drag a face from the People view mode to the Keyword List panel as a shortcut for applying a correct people keyword. Similarly, you can drag a person keyword to a face in the People view mode to apply.

You will also notice in the context menu shown in Figure 10.55 that you can choose Convert Keywords to Person Keywords. This means if you have previously assigned a keyword with someone’s name, you can convert this to a person keyword. You can do this for single or multiple selected keywords. You can even select a parent keyword, convert it into a person keyword, and all the associated child keywords will also be converted. This step adds the keyword to the person keyword list, but will not necessarily always add face regions to the photos. But where a face region does get added and you enter the first few letters of that person’s name, Lightroom will now know to auto-complete this as a known person keyword.

1. In this example, I wanted to convert an existing, regular keyword to become a person keyword. First, I clicked the arrow next to the keyword Joel to load all of the photos with this keyword into Library Grid view. Next, I right-clicked the regular keyword to access the context menu and selected Convert Keywords to Person Keywords.

2. I then clicked the People button to switch to People view. At this stage in People view mode, Lightroom had assigned face regions to the photos, which now needed confirming. I selected all, typed Joel for one of the selected faces, and pressed .

As you use the Face tagging feature to identify people, you can train it to become better at recognizing people you photograph regularly. However, this happens only when there are clearly recognizable facial features. Photos you assign person keywords to that don’t happen to have recognizable features won’t confuse things. Therefore, if the subject you add a person keyword to happens to be wearing dark sunglasses or a mask, this won’t deprecate the Lightroom face-recognition process.

When a filter is in effect, you can use Library Enable Filters to toggle it on and off, or use the (Mac) or (PC) keyboard shortcut (Figure 10.58). You can also manage filter behavior via the File Library Filters menu (shown in Figure 10.59). The reason for this duplication is so you can access the same filter options when working in modules other than the Library module. Selecting the Lock Filters item makes a library filter persistent across all sources (i.e., all folders and collections). You then have to remember to use (Mac) or (PC) to toggle this sticky library filter setting on or off. When Lock Filters is selected, you can also select the Remember Each Source’s Filters Separately option. This allows you to make library filters sticky per folder/collection. When enabled, the filter settings are remembered for each specific folder or collection. There are times when this kind of behavior can be desirable, as long as you are aware when a filter is active and you know how to toggle the library filter setting on or off. Incidentally, if you select the “Show message when loading or rendering photos” option in the Loupe View options, a status message will remind you when a filter is currently active.

1. In this example, you can see a collection of photos from a location shoot in which I assigned a red color label to the interior and exterior shots, yellow to the black-and-white kitchen shots, green to the staff portraits, blue to the outdoor farm photos, and purple to the final food still-life shots. Because I had not yet applied any filters, all the images were visible in the Library module Grid view.

2. I clicked the yellow filter button in the Filmstrip to filter just the yellow-labeled photos.

3. Next, I -clicked the yellow swatch to display all the photos except for the yellow-labeled ones. An inverted swatch selection such as this excludes those photos that do not have a color label.

The Master Photos and Virtual Copies filters can therefore be used to filter the display to show or hide the master copy photos only and show or hide the virtual copy photos only. To do this, go to the Library module Library menu, choose Filter by Kind, and choose All, Virtual Copies, Master Photos, or Videos (Figure 10.67). But it is actually far simpler to use the Virtual Copies and Master Photos filter buttons that are located in the Attribute section of the Filter bar (Figure 10.68).

Deselecting Show Photos in Subfolders modifies the photo display in all folders. If there are no photos outside the subfolders, you will see a message that says, “No photos in selected folder, subfolders not shown.” This makes it clear why a folder view may appear empty. Let me give you an example of how this works. In the Folders panel view in Figure 10.70, I selected a folder called London that contained 13,982 photos, of which 10,881 photos were contained in 56 subfolders, which meant there were 3101 photos floating around in the London folder that were not assigned to any of the London subfolders. In this instance, I deselected Show Photos in Subfolders in the Library menu. Therefore, when I clicked the London folder, it showed a photo count of 3101 photos and excluded the images contained in the subfolders.

The general idea here is that you can use successive Add to Selection commands to build lots of different kinds of filter selections. For example, you can use the Select by Color Label menu to add yellow label images to a red or yellow photo selection. You can also use the Select by Rating Intersect with Selection menu to create selections of photos that have matching criteria only. Or, you could use this method to select all the one-star-rated photos that have a red or yellow label. The Edit “Select by” menu options can be used in this way to create any number of selection rules, which may be useful when managing large collections of photos.

The Filter bar is the main place to go to whenever you need to make refined filter selections of photos in the catalog (although you can also use the Filmstrip controls to filter by ratings and labels). The Filter bar therefore groups together the filter controls in order to make the filtering process more centralized and flexible. It lets you filter the photos shown in the catalog using Text, Attributes (like those in the Filmstrip), Metadata, or a combination of all three. There is a lock button in the top-right section of the Filter bar (circled in Figure 10.74). Clicking this button locks the filter settings and has the same effect as selecting Lock Filters in the File Library Filters submenu.

The Filter bar lock behavior is also governed by the Remember Each Source’s Filters Separately option that is highlighted in Figure 10.72. If this item is selected, enabling the lock in the Filter bar allows you to lock filters for specific view sources. If it is not selected, enabling the lock in the Filter bar allows you to lock filters globally. Remember, you can also use the Enable Filters shortcut ( [Mac] or [PC]) to toggle a filter search on or off.

To summarize, locking a filter allows you to lock the filter settings for a specific folder or collection view or to lock the filter settings globally. The Enable Filters command allows you to turn filters on or off (however they might be applied).

Filename searches can be fairly straightforward. For instance, I often search specifically by Filename using a Contains rule and type the filename I am looking for in the Search field. I use this filter method when a client has made their final image selection and sent me a list of filenames of the photos they want me to retouch. All I need to do then is make a general selection of the client’s photos and type in the last four digits of the selected filenames. This is usually enough to quickly locate each of the photos I am looking for. I discussed Copy Name earlier in the Metadata panel section. Basically, you can use this to search the copy names that have been used for all your virtual copy images. All the other types of searches enable you to narrow the range of a text search to concentrate on the selected metadata type only, such as captions or keywords. If you are unsure precisely where to search, the easiest option is to revert to using the more general Any Searchable Field approach, but doing so might mean you end up with too many matches to choose from.

The individual panels can be customized by clicking the panel header and selecting one of the many metadata search criteria that are available (Figure 10.83). The default view gives you four panels to work with, but you can customize this layout by clicking the button in the top-right corner of each panel (Figure 10.84) to either add extra columns (up to eight in total) or remove columns. When filtering by Date, Keyword, or Location, there are also options to choose a Hierarchical or Flat list for the Metadata list views. When filtering by Date, there are also Ascending and Descending date options. Because you are able to customize the layout of the panels, this can provide you with lots of ways to filter the catalog photos. Selecting multiple items within a single panel allows you to include more terms in a filter selection, where you can use the key or the key (Mac) or key (PC) to select more than one search term in each panel. Selecting search items from other, separate panels will allow you to “intersect” a photo filter selection and narrow a search.

The File Type section can be used to separate images by file format and make it easy to quickly filter out images, such as the TIFF masters or the raw DNG images. The Keyword category is one that you will probably want to use much of the time when searching the catalog, and in Figure 10.85, you can see an example where I used two Keyword filter columns to narrow a keyword search.

The Label category (Figure 10.86) almost amounts to the same thing as clicking a color label swatch in the Filters section of the Filmstrip. The main difference is that the Label filters used here allow you to distinguish between the color of a label and any text associated with that label. To understand what I mean by this, please refer to the section on sorting color labels on page 637.

Figure 10.87 shows an example of a Filter bar search that achieves the same filter result as the combined filter search described at the beginning of this chapter. The Filter bar search applied here was based on a three-star filter for photographs taken in 2010, using the keyword elephant.

The Camera filter option can be used to filter by camera model, and the Camera Serial Number option by serial number. Imagine, for example, that you suspect a fault has developed on one of your camera bodies. Inspecting the images by camera type can let you filter out the images shot using that specific camera. The Lens filter (Figure 10.88) is useful for filtering the catalog by lens type, which can be handy when you are searching for shots that were taken using a specific lens. Flash State refers to whether the on-camera flash was fired or not. With the Shutter Speed filter, you can filter photos according to the shutter speed the photos were shot at. Likewise, the Aperture filter lists every aperture setting that has been used, which might be useful for shortlisting pictures shot at a particular lens aperture setting. With ISO Speed Rating, you can quickly filter the high-ISO shots from all the rest, and the GPS Data filter lets you filter according to whether GPS data is embedded or not. If you select the Map Location filter, you can filter by the location names saved in the Map module.

The next few sections require that you have entered custom metadata in the catalog photos. The Location and Creator categories can be useful if you are in the habit of editing the associated IPTC fields via the Metadata panel. If so, you can quickly filter the catalog photos by any of the IPTC metadata items you see here. Location, City, State/Province, and Country all refer to the Location IPTC metadata used to describe where a photo was shot (you may use keywords to do this as well, of course, but only the IPTC data is referenced here). The Creator section filters photos by who was the creator. With some camera systems, you can configure the camera settings so that the creator name is always embedded at the capture stage for each and every shot. The Copyright Status and Job reference are also further examples of IPTC metadata that first has to be entered by the user.

The Aspect Ratio filter lets you filter according to whether the photos are landscape, portrait, or square. The Smart Preview Status filter filters photos that have or do not have Smart Previews. Snapshot Status lets you separate images that do and do not have snapshots. Treatment refers to photos that are in color or have been converted to black and white. The Develop Preset filter filters according to the Develop module presets that may have been applied to the photos in the catalog, including those that have just had the default settings applied. This is a useful filter for tracking down photos that have had a particular type of treatment, such as a favorite black-and-white conversion or split-toning technique (Figure 10.89). Are you looking for inspiration? You could select All Photographs to view the entire catalog and use this filter category to check out certain Develop preset effects as applied to various images. You could then copy the develop setting from one of these filtered photos or make a note to apply this particular Develop preset to other images. And lastly, the Metadata Status lets you filter photos according to whether the metadata is up to date, has been changed, has been changed on disk only, or there is a metadata conflict.

1. I first selected All Photographs in the Catalog panel. I then went to the Filter bar, clicked the Text tab, and chose to search by keywords only using the Contain rule. I then typed in the name of one of my clients, Gallagher, to initiate a catalog search for photos that were keyworded with the word Gallagher. As I began typing in the first few letters, the search narrowed the selection of images in the Grid view to show all the photos where the keywords metadata contained this same sequence of letters. The Filter bar search filtered the photos in the grid to show 3,769 photos that had been shot for this client. This included everything—the raw files as well as the TIFF masters. The next task was to whittle this selection down to something more specific.

2. I -clicked the Attribute tab and applied a three-star filter to show only the three-star or higher images. I also clicked on the Master files button to include master files only, excluding any virtual copy or movie files. Next, I -clicked the Metadata tab to reveal the Metadata filter options and used a Date panel to search for photos that had been shot in 2011. I now had 276 images to choose from. Lastly, I used a File Type panel to search for TIFF Document File Types. This resulted in a filter selection that showed only the TIFF file format photos shot during 2011 for this client that had been rated with three or more stars. This resulted in a filter search of just 4 photos out of the original 3,628.

You can also publish photos to a hard drive directory on the computer. If designing a book, you can use the Publish panel to generate resized TIFF files for use in the book and publish these to the folder that is linked to by the page-layout program. If changes need to be made to any of the images, you can edit them in Lightroom, and then simply republish them to generate new TIFF masters that will remain automatically linked in the page-layout program. You can also use this mechanism to maintain off-site backups of important original images. It is also possible to create multiple folders via the Publish Services panel.

The following steps show how I configured the settings for the Photoshelter Archive, a third-party publish services plug-in, I have installed in Lightroom.

Downloadable Content:

thelightroombook.com

1. To start with, I clicked the Plus button in the top-right corner of the Publish Services panel and selected Go to Publishing Manager. This opened the Lightroom Publishing Manager dialog shown here. I then clicked on the Photoshelter Archive publish service and entered my account details. Here, I configured the remaining Export settings to establish what size I would like the large images to be and chose to add screen sharpening to images uploaded to this service.

2. The plug-in auto-detected the six main categories on my site: Ashridge, Hair, Landscapes, Portraits, Reflections, and Vancouver Island. I was now ready to start adding photographs via the Photoshelter service. To do this, I made a selection of photos via the Library module and dragged these across to the Landscapes category.

3. I was now ready to publish. The photos I had just added appeared under the New Photos to Publish section, meaning they had yet to be uploaded. To do this, I needed to click the Publish button (there is a Publish button in the bar at the top, as well as in the bottom-left corner) to publish them to my Photoshelter website. This instructed Lightroom to upload all the New Photos to Publish photos. As the photos were added, they emptied from the New Photos to Publish section and joined the Published Photos section. There, they would remain until I decided to do something else to them. For example, if I were to edit the IPTC metadata or the Develop settings for any of these photos, this would move the image out from the Published Photos group and into the Modified Photos to Republish section. This mechanism allows you to keep track of which photos have been published and which ones have been modified in some way or have yet to be published. Lightroom therefore always keeps me informed whenever I needed to update the photos published on my website. Should you need to, you can right-click a photo in the Publish Services panel and select Mark to Republish to move it to the Modified Photos to Republish group.

It is important to remember that as you carry out any kind of work in Lightroom—whether you are adjusting the Develop settings, applying a color label or star rating, or editing keywords or other metadata—such metadata edits are primarily stored in Lightroom’s catalog file. Whenever you alter a photo in Lightroom, you are not manipulating the actual image data. This is because Lightroom is built around the principle that the imported images are the master negatives and these should never be edited directly. Lightroom therefore records the changes made as metadata information, and these edit changes are always stored at a central location in the Lightroom catalog. This is why Lightroom can be much faster at searching images compared to a browser program such as Bridge. You can add, search, and read metadata information more quickly because the metadata information is all stored in a central catalog file. However, it is also possible for the metadata information to be stored within the individual files themselves, by choosing to explicitly save the metadata to the files directly. In the case of JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PSD, or DNG images, there is a dedicated XMP space within the file header that can be used to store the metadata. However, with proprietary raw files, the metadata has to be stored separately in what is known as an XMP sidecar file. Basically, whenever you edit an image in Lightroom, whether you make adjustments in the Develop module or add keywords, everything you do is recorded directly to the Lightroom catalog file. At the same time, you also have the option to perform an explicit save, which saves the updated metadata to the files’ XMP space. Or, you can configure Lightroom to do this for you automatically in the background when the program is idle.

The fact you can save metadata edits to the file as well as to the catalog may seem like a good thing. Doing so can provide you with an extra level of backup security, but there are a few things to bear in mind here. First, no matter how often you remember to save and update your files, the central catalog file will always contain the most up-to-date version of what has happened to the image files contained in the catalog. The catalog file should, therefore, always be regarded as the primary database—the truth is in the catalog. Second, a major benefit of having everything stored in the catalog file is that all the edit work you do is stored in a single, relatively lightweight database document. This means that backing up can be fast and easy because all you have to do is make a copy of the catalog file rather than make a backup copy of every single image that has been modified since the last time you backed up. Of course, in the case of proprietary raw and HEIC files only the XMP sidecar files need to be backed up, and this can be done very quickly without needing to back up the original raws. However, in the case of raw DNG, TIFF, PSD, PNG, and JPEG images, whenever you update the metadata for these types of files, the entire file has to be copied during the backup process.

A third point is that if you set up Lightroom to “Automatically write changes into XMP,” a lot of disk activity has to take place as Lightroom tries to catch up with all the latest adjustments that have been made to the photos in the catalog. The same is true each time you manually choose to save edits to a large number of files. Following on from this, if you keep modifying files in this way over and over again, there is the added risk that these files may one day become corrupted. Let me stress that it is only a very small risk, but all the same, it’s one worth avoiding.

So, when should you save metadata to the files? If you work with a browser program such as Bridge alongside Lightroom, the only way Bridge can read the metadata is from the file itself (because Bridge cannot read the metadata stored in the Lightroom catalog). So, if you want your Lightroom edits to show up in Bridge, it is necessary to first save the metadata to the file. And, if you are working with other types of cataloging programs in conjunction with Lightroom, it will again be necessary to save any metadata changes to the file so that these can be read. There are also some production workflows that may involve transferring files from one Lightroom catalog to another, where it may be easiest to save the current metadata changes to the files so these can be read when they are imported to another Lightroom catalog. Consequently, we sometimes have to ask ourselves whether the “truth is in the database” (the Lightroom catalog) or the “truth is in the file.” I will return to this question shortly.

For most of the time that you are working in Lightroom, it should not really matter if the metadata information is stored only in the catalog. The main thing is to remember to make regular backups of the catalog, such as once a week, as well as carry out scheduled system backups. It helps too that Lightroom has a built-in catalog backup feature, as well as diagnostics and self-repair functions, to help keep your catalog file protected. If Lightroom detects on launch that the catalog database file has become corrupted, there is a Repair Catalog option (Figure 10.94).

Turning on the “Automatically write changes into XMP” option is useful if you wish the metadata updating to always take place in the background. You could regard this as a way to perform an additional metadata backup. For example, if you were to find yourself in the unfortunate position of having a damaged catalog file, you could open the most recently saved backup and choose Metadata Read Metadata from Files command to read in and restore the most recent missing metadata.

A down arrow in the top-right corner of a grid cell (Figure 10.97) indicates the metadata information embedded in the photo’s XMP space is now out of date compared to the current Lightroom catalog file. This means you need to choose Metadata Save Metadata to File ( [Mac] or [PC]) if you want to update the metadata saved to the file. Choosing Save Metadata to File pops open the dialog shown in Figure 10.98, which asks if you wish to continue. If you are uncertain what to do, you can click the down arrow icon, which opens the dialog shown in Figure 10.99. This dialog asks if you want to save the metadata changes to disk (which could also be described as “Do you wish to confirm saving the metadata changes to the photo’s XMP space?”).

The up arrow in Figure 10.100 indicates the metadata information embedded in the image file’s XMP space is out of sync and more recent than the current Lightroom catalog file. This can occur when you have edited a Lightroom catalog file in Bridge or Camera Raw and the externally edited image has a more recently modified XMP than the Lightroom catalog. If you are confident you do want to read the externally applied edit changes, then choose Metadata Read Metadata from File.

If there is a metadata status conflict because the settings have been modified both in Lightroom and another external program, you will see the warning icon shown in Figure 10.101. This situation can occur when the Lightroom catalog photo may have been modified in Lightroom (without saving the metadata to the file) and has also been edited by an external program, resulting in two possible “truths” for the file. Is the truth now in the Lightroom catalog, or is the truth in the externally edited file XMP metadata? Clicking the icon opens the dialog shown in Figure 10.102, where you can choose either to Import Settings from Disk (if you think the external settings are right) or Overwrite Settings (if you think the Lightroom catalog settings are the most truthful and up to date).

In the Metadata panel (Figure 10.103), there is an item called Metadata Status. If anything has been done to edit the photo metadata settings since the last time the metadata was saved to the file, Metadata Status will list “Has been changed.” This is basically telling you the same thing as the metadata status icon that appears in the Library Grid cells.

In the Metadata section of the Catalog Settings (Figure 10.104), the “Include Develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and PSD files” option lets Lightroom distinguish between writing the Develop settings metadata to the XMP space for all files, including JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, PNG, and PSD files, or to raw and DNG files only. This preference predetermines what gets written to the XMP space when you explicitly save the Develop settings metadata to the file. But the ability to save Develop settings into non-raw files can be a mixed blessing. If you are sharing images with another Lightroom catalog, but are not exporting them as a catalog, you will most likely want to save the metadata settings to the XMP space. But for Creative Cloud customers sharing files from Lightroom with Bridge, this can lead to some unexpected file behavior when you open non-raw files via Bridge. Basically, raw and DNG images whose Develop settings have been modified via Lightroom, and the metadata saved, will open in Camera Raw via Bridge exactly as you expect to see them, because Bridge is able to read the settings that were created in Lightroom. However, where you have non-raw files, such as JPEGs, HEICs or TIFFs that have been edited via the Lightroom Develop module, and the Develop settings have been written to the file’s XMP space, Bridge may now consider such files to be like raw files and open them via Camera Raw rather than open them directly in Photoshop. That is what I mean by a “mixed blessing.”

If you want Lightroom to retain the ability to modify the XMP space of non-raw files for data such as file ratings, keywords, and labels but exclude storing the Develop settings, you should deselect the “Include develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and PSD files” option. Do this and the Lightroom Develop settings for non-raw files will get written to the Lightroom catalog only and will not be exported to the files when you choose Save Metadata. Meanwhile, raw and DNG files will be handled as expected. On the plus side, you will never face the confusion of seeing your non-raw images such as JPEG, HEIC or TIFF unexpectedly default to open via Camera Raw when you had expected them to open in Photoshop. The downside is that if you modify a non-raw image in Lightroom using the Develop module, these changes will be seen only in Lightroom and not by Bridge.

Let me further explain the settings and how they affect image files after being modified in Lightroom. If a photo in Lightroom is modified using the settings shown in Figure 10.104 with “Automatically write changes into XMP” and “Include develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and PSD files” enabled, then all the adjustments made to the image will automatically be saved to the Lightroom catalog and also saved to the original image file. In the case of proprietary raw files, the XMP metadata will be written to an XMP sidecar file and when opened via Bridge will, as you would expect, open via the Camera Raw dialog with the same Develop settings that were applied in Lightroom. In the case of DNG files, the XMP metadata will be written internally to the file and these, too, will open in Camera Raw. In the case of JPEG or TIFF files, because you are including the Lightroom Develop settings in the save to the XMP space, they will also default to opening in Bridge via the Adobe Camera Raw dialog. However, just to add to the confusion, this does assume that the Camera Raw preferences are set to “Automatically open JPEGs and HEICs with Settings” and “Automatically open TIFFs with Settings.” This leads me to also mention that in the case of HEIC files, as with raw files, the Develop settings are always saved to an XMP sidecar file. Yet, the file opening behavior of such files via Bridge is the same as for JPEGs that have the XMP data written internally. Whether HEIC files open via Camera Raw or open directly in Photoshop depends on how the aforementioned Camera Raw preferences are configured. And in case you were wondering about PNG and PSD files, these cannot be opened via Camera Raw. The ability to save Develop edits to PNG or PSD files only matters if you intend sharing these files with another Lightroom catalog.

If the “Automatically write changes into XMP” option is disabled, as shown in Figure 10.105, the metadata edits will be saved to the Lightroom catalog only. Raw and DNG files will open via Bridge in Camera Raw, but won’t show the most recent Develop module edits. If you were to open JPEG, HEIC, or TIFF images via Bridge that had just been edited in Lightroom, these will open directly in Photoshop and not open via Camera Raw. PNG and PSD will always open directly in Photoshop anyway. But at the same time, any image ratings, metadata keywords, or other information that may have been entered while working in Lightroom will not be visible to Bridge or any other external editing program either. In this example, the “Include develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and PSD files” option is still switched on, so if you did want the metadata edits to be saved to the files’ XMP metadata space, you would have to do so manually using the Save Metadata command ( [Mac] or [PC]). But in doing so, you would once again be saving all the Lightroom settings to the files’ metadata space (including the Develop settings), and we are back to the same scenario as in Figure 10.104 where non-raw files may default to opening via Camera Raw, which is perhaps not what was wanted.

Now let’s look at what happens when “Include develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, PNG, and PSD files” and “Automatically write changes into XMP” are both disabled (Figure 10.106). As before, any edit changes you make in Lightroom will be saved to the Lightroom catalog only. If you do choose to explicitly save the metadata, this saves everything to the raw or DNG files, but in the case of JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, PNG, or PSD files, this saves all the metadata to the file except for any Develop module edits. When such files are opened from Bridge, they will open in Photoshop directly instead of via the Camera Raw dialog. When you save with this configuration, Lightroom saves the informational metadata edits to the file but saves the Develop settings to raw or DNG files only. JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, PNG, and PSD files will not contain Develop edits and always open directly in Photoshop.

As with raw file formats, there are currently quite a number of different proprietary formats for storing GPS coordinates, not all of which are compatible with the different software solutions that utilize GPS data. Of these, the GPX format has emerged as an industry standard, and only tracklogs written in this format can be loaded into the Lightroom Map module. Therefore, it is desirable to use a GPS device able to export data using GPX. If yours doesn’t, you can still rely on third-party software to read the recorded GPS data, match it with your photos, and geocode the images.

The various hardware options you can buy will most likely already come with supplied software for a Mac or PC, which you can use to geocode your photos. The problem is that many of these programs are designed to write GPS data to JPEG images only. You need to make sure the software you use is able to geocode the GPS data to raw files using XMP sidecar files. This will then allow Lightroom to read in the geocoded metadata. For Mac users, I recommend HoudahGeo 5 (houdah.com/houdahgeo) and GPSPhotoLinker (earlyinnovations.com). For PC users, I recommend GeoSetter (geosetter.de/en).

On a cautionary note, be aware that some geocoding software either does not use the correct EXIF field to store the data or stores the GPS data within its own database only, thereby forcing you to use only that software to make use of the recorded data. Remember also, that if the software you use is able to edit the EXIF data of a proprietary raw file, you should take extra care that this does not affect the integrity of the file. It is generally not a good idea to mess with the XMP data of an undocumented raw file format. You never know if this may cause problems reading other data that’s stored in the file. For example, when reviewing one of the geocoding products shown in an earlier version of this book, I had to point out that the lens data in the lens data EXIF field would appear truncated after modifying the raw files. No real harm was done to the image data, but it was unnerving all the same to see this happen.

With the right equipment and good timekeeping, you can make an accurate record of where a photograph was taken from at a particular point in time. Such data may prove helpful to say, historians in the future, although given the inaccuracy of many of the photos you currently see placed on Google Earth, I wonder if the data recorded today will be seen as being that valuable? I find that most are wildly inaccurate. But even so, it does amaze me that the photos I have shot using my iPhone mostly have very precise GPS coordinates.

To reverse-geocode in Lightroom, you need to open the Catalog Settings and enable “Look up City, state and country of GPS coordinates to provide address suggestions” (When you first create a new catalog in Lightroom, you will be asked if you wish to enable this feature). Once done, geocoded images will display the location name metadata in the Metadata panel (Figure 10.116). To apply location field names, manually click on the location header names circled in Figure 10.117. This reveals a pop-up menu from which you can select and confirm the name for each location name field.

Unsurprisingly, this has brought about some concerns, such as whether it is appropriate to include GPS and other location data when releasing photos into the public domain. For example, there have been panic stories about photos of children taken by their parents at home, which have then been uploaded to a social network site, and the embedded GPS data shows the exact address where the family lives. I can imagine news documentary photographers who might not always want to reveal information about where their photos were taken. Fortunately, the Library module Publish Services panel and Export dialog give you the option to exclude all location metadata. As GPS embedding becomes more widely available, professional photographers have to take extra care to make sure they are not breaking any laws or inadvertently breaking client confidentiality by leaving any GPS data embedded.

The Search field can be used to search the Google Maps database to find a specific place. Very often, a single place name will suffice when making a search. Otherwise, use a comma when entering a place name hierarchy. So, for example, you might want to specify searching for Las Vegas, New Mexico, if you did not want the search to default to Las Vegas, Nevada. If you are not sure of an exact location, or there might be more than one place associated with a specific search, you will see a pop-up list of suggestions after you press . This allows you to select whichever is the correct, desired location (Figure 10.122).

1. To begin, I clicked the tracklog button (circled above) and loaded a GPX tracklog. The GPS tracklog route then showed up in the Map module map view as a blue route. Before I used this to tag the photos in the Filmstrip, I wanted to ensure the selected photos matched the same time zone as had been recorded by the tracklog.

2. Essentially, the tracklog is always correct. What is not always correct is the Date Time set in the camera and, thus, the Date Time that is embedded in the capture image files. The objective here is to work out just what that time difference might be. If you think your camera is set correctly, taking into account daylight-saving time, you can proceed to Step 3. Otherwise, go to the Tracklog menu shown open in Step 1 and select Set Time Zone Offset. If the camera times appear not to match, the tracklog time will appear in red. As you adjust the Offset slider, you will know when you are close to the correct setting when the tracklog time is displayed in black.

3. Once the time zone was set correctly, all I had to do was to select the photos in the Filmstrip and choose Auto-Tag Selected Photos from the Tracklog menu. This successfully matched the photos to the tracklog.

When you geocode images manually in this way, the IPTC location fields in the Metadata panel are filled automatically, but only if none of the location fields is empty to begin with and only if you have the “Look up City, state and country of GPS coordinates to provide address suggestions” option enabled in the Metadata section of the Catalog Settings. If any of the fields already has information, Lightroom will not auto-populate them with new location data (even though the new data might be more accurate). If you need to update the location, you will have to do so manually.

If you right-click anywhere in the Map module, you will see an Add GPS Location to Selected Photos menu option. This allows you to manually geotag photos by making a selection in the Filmstrip first and then using the context menu to geotag the selected photos. You can also use this context menu to select a Delete GPS Coordinates option.

1. In this example, I made a selection of photos via the Filmstrip and right-clicked in the Map view to select Add a GPS Location to Selected Photos.

2. The selected photos were now geotagged to this location.