Can Lightroom copy keywords and face tags from JPEG sidecars to matching RAW files?
Asked 7/15/2010
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I shot many images as RAW+JPEG. I added keywords and people tags to the JPEGs in Windows Live Photo Gallery, and now I want that metadata to appear on the matching RAW files in Lightroom, or at least in the Lightroom catalog. Is there any way to sync or import that metadata from the JPEGs to the RAWs?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
16y ago
2 Answers
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You can use free, open-source utility Exiftool to extract the metadata from the JPG files. If your RAW files are supported, you can have it add the information directly to the RAW. If not, you can have Exiftool create XMP sidecars, which stand a chance of being imported into Lightroom.
One difficulty with this task overall is that most versions of LR have some pretty firm ideas about where it gets metadata. If it thinks it knows how to get it from an image file, it tends to ignore any sidecars. So part of the exercise will involve some experimentation to find out what LR will be happiest with.
In any case, Exiftool should probably be in your toolbox.
Originally by user707. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user707
16y ago
0
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Lightroom does not have a built-in way to automatically copy metadata from JPEGs to matching RAW files. In your case, the main limitation is Windows Live Photo Gallery: it generally does not write XMP sidecar data that Lightroom could easily read for RAW files.
Your best automated option is ExifTool. It can read metadata from the JPEGs and either:
- write it directly into supported RAW files, or
- create XMP sidecars for the RAWs.
That said, Lightroom can be picky about where it reads metadata from, and for some RAW formats it may ignore sidecars if it expects metadata inside the file itself. So this may require testing on a few sample files first.
If automation does not work, the fallback is to do it manually inside Lightroom: show the JPEGs and RAWs together in Grid view or a collection, then copy metadata from each JPEG and paste/sync it to the matching RAW file.
So: not really possible directly in Lightroom from Windows Live Photo Gallery metadata, but ExifTool may help, and manual copy/paste in Lightroom is the practical fallback.
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