How can I update Lightroom copyright metadata to match each photo’s capture year?
Asked 8/8/2015
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2 answers
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I accidentally set the copyright metadata in Lightroom 4 to the wrong year for many photos. I’d like to correct it based on each photo’s capture date rather than editing images one by one. Is there a way in Lightroom to batch-update the IPTC copyright field so photos from each year get the matching year, assuming the EXIF capture date is correct?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
11y ago
2 Answers
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This only sets the ITPC copyright line, assumes the EXIF date information is correct, and has to be done per individual year, but it works for me.
In the Library module, if your photos are filed by date, select the year's folder in the Folders pane. Alternatively, if your photos are not filed by date, select your entire Library, apply the Metadata filter, and select a year in the Date column.
Do a Select All (Ctrl/Cmd-A) to select all of the year's photos. Make sure you've only got the single year's worth of photos selected.
Click on the Sync Metadata button.
Make sure that only the checkbox for Copyright is selected (it's the only field you want to sync up).
Fill in the text you want for your copyright. I'm old fashioned and prefer the entire "Copyright (c)YYYY myname. All rights reserved." type text, but it's up to you.
Repeat Steps 1-5 for each year's worth of photos in your catalog.
Alternatively, you could also write a script using exiftool, but that requires some basic programming chops and familiarity with command line tools.
Originally by user27440. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user27440
11y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes—Lightroom can do this in batches, but not automatically per photo from the date field. The practical method is to update one year at a time.
In the Library module, first isolate photos from a single year:
- If your folders are organized by date, select that year’s folder.
- Otherwise, select your library and use the Metadata filter to choose a year in the Date column.
Then:
- Select all photos for that year.
- Click Sync Metadata.
- Check only Copyright.
- Enter the correct copyright text for that year.
Repeat for each year you need to fix.
This works for the IPTC copyright field as long as the EXIF capture date is correct. Lightroom 4 doesn’t provide a built-in feature to dynamically calculate the copyright year from capture date for every image in one pass, so grouping by year and syncing metadata is the straightforward solution.
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