Mandatory Info - Caption & Keywords not being uploaded with submissions

[David McGill]

I have noticed that on my recent submissions the mandatory info i.e. Caption and Keywords is not present when I "process" them in Image Manager. I am using Lightroom Classic to edit my images adding my title, caption and keywords prior to uploading them to Alamy using the Upload button in Image Manager. Has something changed in either LR or Alamy's method of organising submissions in recent weeks? All my submissions last year included the mandatory info so all I had to do was complete the Optional section number of people, property in the image etc.

 

David

 

[Chexy]

You may not have updated the Lightroom metadata of the outputted images prior to uploading them. 

[David McGill]

7 hours ago, Chexy said:

You may not have updated the Lightroom metadata of the outputted images prior to uploading them. 

How do I do that? I've never updated the metadata after I have entered it into LR. I just add my title, caption and keywords to my images. I then open PS and check each image at 100% for blemishes, any cropping and levels adjustment before saving the file as a .jpg10 (max). I then log into Alamy and upload the files. Do you think somewhere in this workflow that the metadata is being "lost" from the images? I have been using this workflow method for ages and have never had any problems with the data not being present when I use Image Manager in Alamy.

 

David

[Harry Harrison]

I don't have an answer but I presume that, like me, you will export your jpegs from Lightroom into a folder before uploading them.  Are you sure that when you export them you are including all the metadata because as you know there are options not to do so in the export window. I've saved an 'Alamy' export preset so I know that can't happen but maybe you don't? Simplest check would be to inspect those jpegs in either Windows Explorer or Mac 'Get Info' to see if the metadata is there.

 

Edit: I see that you open them in Photoshop after exporting from Lightroom so presumably you are seeing the metadata is there then? 

 

 

Edited January 5, 2022 by Harry Harrison

[David McGill]

8 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

I don't have an answer but I presume that, like me, you will export your jpegs from Lightroom into a folder before uploading them.  Are you sure that when you export them you are including all the metadata because as you know there are options not to do so in the export window. I've saved an 'Alamy' export preset so I know that can't happen but maybe you don't? Simplest check would be to inspect those jpegs in either Windows Explorer or Mac 'Get Info' to see if the metadata is there.

 

Edit: I see that you open them in Photoshop after exporting from Lightroom so presumably you are seeing the metadata is there then? 

 

 

Thanks - I think you have sort of "hit the nail on the head"!

I have not been exporting images from LR into PS. I just open them in PS, however, I have not been checking the File Info to make sure the metadata is there because in the past it always has been! It hasn't recently for some reason, maybe it has something to do with a the recent change in LR where if you want to have the same metadata for more than one image you have to "hit" the new selected images button as I have already found when I uploaded a batch to Alamy a few days ago.

In LR if I then choose to Edit in PS the metadata has been written to the image and it is present in PS when I select File Info. So maybe I should go down that route in future rather than open the images from the folder where they have been imported from my memory card.

I don't export them from LR into a specific folder before uploading to Alamy. I have an "Inputs" folder for all images until I have "processed" them. After that I move them to the folder system I have been using for years.

Anyway, thanks for your input.

 

Cheers

David

 

[Harry Harrison]

1 hour ago, David McGill said:

I have not been checking the File Info to make sure the metadata is there because in the past it always has been! It hasn't recently for some reason, maybe it has something to do with a the recent change in LR where if you want to have the same metadata for more than one image you have to "hit" the new selected images button as I have already found when I uploaded a batch to Alamy a few days ago.

Right, since I shoot RAW and use Lightroom 6.14 I can't really advise then. With RAW you have to set Lightroom to 'Automatically write changes to xmp' if you want the metadata to exist with the images outside of the catalogue but I'd never thought about what would happen with jpegs, my guess would have been that it wouldn't be embedded in the jpegs in fact but I must be wrong about that. Of course with RAW files you always have to export the jpegs and in that case you can control what metadata is exported to some extent, if you use the Metadata Wrangler plug-in you can fine tune it to the nth degree, you can also resize and set the jpeg quality of course so I would have thought there were advantages to doing it that way even if you just choose to delete them after uploading though I keep all mine, or have done until now.

[MDM]

8 hours ago, David McGill said:

It hasn't recently for some reason, maybe it has something to do with a the recent change in LR where if you want to have the same metadata for more than one image you have to "hit" the new selected images button as I have already found when I uploaded a batch to Alamy a few days ago.

 

 

 

I just discovered this change in Lightroom very recently which dates back to Oct 2021 major update to V11. So what you say in bold above must surely be at the heart of your problem (that is pretty much hitting the nail on the head actually and it helped me figure it out) and it has nothing to do with how you open the images into Photoshop (from within Lightroom or from a folder) or how you upload the images. Basically my guess is the metadata is not copying across the images (you don't say how you do this as there are several methods for copying or synchronising metadata between images in Lightroom) as that is what I was seeing. If you have still not figured this out, then please give details of how you are synchronising the metadata across the images in Lightroom and I will give you a simple method of going back to the previous behaviour. I have to say this change by Adobe is one of the most complicated bits of GUI modification they have done in Lightroom and it is not at all clear to me why they have done it.

 

 

7 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Right, since I shoot RAW and use Lightroom 6.14 I can't really advise then. With RAW you have to set Lightroom to 'Automatically write changes to xmp' if you want the metadata to exist with the images outside of the catalogue but I'd never thought about what would happen with jpegs, my guess would have been that it wouldn't be embedded in the jpegs in fact but I must be wrong about that.

 

Harry - you need to be using the latest version to understand the problem here. You are wrong there as you say. If you enter user metadata into a raw sidecar and open in Photoshop, it automatically goes with the JPEG, PSD, TIFF etc. You can choose to keep or discard the raw conversion data but as far as I know the basic metadata goes automatically with the file. You need to export the file and choose to discard the metadataif you want to do that. (I might be wrong there ??).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by MDM

[Harry Harrison]

6 hours ago, MDM said:

Harry - you need to be using the latest version to understand the problem here.

Right, thanks, presumably if the jpegs destined for uploading are just exported from Lightroom with the appropriate (Lightroom entered) full metadata then the problem goes away.  Similarly if the jpegs are opened in Photoshop from Lightroom to create a new copy so that the new Photoshop altered versions exist within Lightroom alongside the original jpegs and then these are exported as 'originals' with the appropriate metadata.

[MDM]

2 hours ago, Harry Harrison said:

Right, thanks, presumably if the jpegs destined for uploading are just exported from Lightroom with the appropriate (Lightroom entered) full metadata then the problem goes away.  Similarly if the jpegs are opened in Photoshop from Lightroom to create a new copy so that the new Photoshop altered versions exist within Lightroom alongside the original jpegs and then these are exported as 'originals' with the appropriate metadata.

I think the problem for the OP is that the metadata was only being applied to one image and he had not noticed this happening when opening the images in Photoshop. The same problem would exist if exporting images so that is not the issue.
 

It is all because of a change introduced by Adobe in V11 in how user metadata is applied across one or more images. I presume they have done this to simplify things for new users but it is very confusing for existing users and probably for new users as well. It would take some time to explain in detail as there are several ways to allay metadata across multiple images so I’ll wait to see if the OP comes back to give more detail. Bottom line is I think he solved it himself anyway. 

Edited January 6, 2022 by MDM

[David McGill]

8 minutes ago, MDM said:

I think the problem for the OP is that the metadata was only being applied to one image and he had not noticed this happening when opening the images in Photoshop. The same problem would exist if exporting images so that is not the issue.
 

 

Thanks to both of you for your replies.

I use Grid View in LR to add metadata to my images highlighting those that will have the same metadata and then filling in Title, Caption and Keywords sections. In view of the "update" to LR I now make sure that "Selected Photos" is highlighted. This means that the metadata is applied to all the images. I quickly discovered that if "Selected Photos" was not highlighted the metadata would only be applied to the first image!

 

I would welcome a way of going back to the previous setup as you have suggested MDM. Anything to keep these operations simple is a great help. I suppose Adobe think that these changes to LR are progress, but to those of us who have been using LR for years might find if difficult to accept and make use of the changes😀

 

Cheers

David

[Harry Harrison]

44 minutes ago, David McGill said:

I use Grid View in LR to add metadata to my images highlighting those that will have the same metadata and then filling in Title, Caption and Keywords sections. In view of the "update" to LR I now make sure that "Selected Photos" is highlighted. This means that the metadata is applied to all the images. I quickly discovered that if "Selected Photos" was not highlighted the metadata would only be applied to the first image!

Thanks for explaining, I'm sure you're by no means the first to have been caught out by that 'update'.

[MDM]

52 minutes ago, David McGill said:

Thanks to both of you for your replies.

I use Grid View in LR to add metadata to my images highlighting those that will have the same metadata and then filling in Title, Caption and Keywords sections. In view of the "update" to LR I now make sure that "Selected Photos" is highlighted. This means that the metadata is applied to all the images. I quickly discovered that if "Selected Photos" was not highlighted the metadata would only be applied to the first image!

 

I would welcome a way of going back to the previous setup as you have suggested MDM. Anything to keep these operations simple is a great help. I suppose Adobe think that these changes to LR are progress, but to those of us who have been using LR for years might find if difficult to accept and make use of the changes😀

 

Cheers

David

 

I probably did not state that very well in terms of going back to the previous behaviour. It was late last night when I was writing that. What I meant really is getting it working in the same way as before but there are several ways of entering metadata across multiple photos. It is not possible to get rid of the tabs so just having Selected Photos selected is basically the answer for the method you use which you have resolved anyway. Other ways of entering metadata across multiple photos are copying and pasting, using a metadata template from the dropdown at the top of the metadata panel and syncing using the large button at the bottom of the metadata panel. 

 

Your observation about Selected Photos helped me understand what was happening as I came across the problem yesterday for the first time and I was not even aware that tab existed until I read your post. It may have been working from the older version until I reset all the warning dialogs (which I was also going to suggest here as this allows you to choose between the so-called Target photo or Selected Photos anyway and you can choose for then dialog not to show again). It doesn't make a lot of sense to me why they introduced these new tabs but perhaps it will become clearer in due course. Normally I am all for change if it leads to progress (as in the new mask features) but in this case I am currently a bit baffled. 

 

The only positive I am seeing is that it is now possible to customise the metadata panel now but only if you select the default option in the dropdown at the top of the metadata panel. This seems like very weird and opaque user interface design to me. 

 

 

Edited January 6, 2022 by MDM