What can I do with the .XMP file?

[Victoria S]

I'm confused about the way photos are saved onto my computer after being ingested by photomechanic. I see that after ingesting, the photos are saved as .NEF file (the raw photo like on the SD card) with a supporting .XMP file. I'm assuming the reason photomechanic ingests so quickly is because of the creation of this supporting file. I wanted to upload the photos I ingested and culled with photomechanic into an online client gallery but it didn't support the file type that it was saved as (neither .NEF or the .NEF plus the .XMP). So I feel like I don't really have my raw photos on my computer because the only thing I can do with them is import them into lightroom and no where else. My workaround was exporting those same photos from lightroom as JPEGs. Now I have duplicates as JPEGs. Those are the ones I was able to upload into the client gallery.

My questions are: what is the .XMP file? What can I do with my raw photos saved in this format? Can I back them up in this format and still be able to use it however later?

All I want to do now is backup the raw photos (the .NEF, not the JPEGs) I ingested and culled using photomechanic onto my external hard drive so that I can delete them from my SD card and clear up some space. I just worry that if I back them up as the .NEF/.XMP that I won't be able to use them later. You might wonder why I don't just move the photos straight from the SD card onto my external hard drive. I can't really do that because it has ALL the photos from the day and I only want to back up the ones I culled. I renamed the photos on ingest and I deleted the ones I didn't want using photomechanic, so it would be nearly impossible for me to figure out which files on the SD card are the ones I kept during the culling process.

I hope my ramblings make sense! Obviously not very technical over here.

[Kirk Baker]

I'm confused about the way photos are saved onto my computer after being ingested by Photo Mechanic. I see that after ingesting, the photos are saved as .NEF file (the raw photo like on the SD card) with a supporting .XMP file. I'm assuming the reason Photo Mechanic ingests so quickly is because of the creation of this supporting file. I wanted to upload the photos I ingested and culled with Photo Mechanic into an online client gallery but it didn't support the file type that it was saved as (neither .NEF or the .NEF plus the .XMP). So I feel like I don't really have my raw photos on my computer because the only thing I can do with them is import them into Lightroom and no where else. My workaround was exporting those same photos from Lightroom as JPEGs. Now I have duplicates as JPEGs. Those are the ones I was able to upload into the client gallery.

My questions are: what is the .XMP file? What can I do with my raw photos saved in this format? Can I back them up in this format and still be able to use it however later?

The file ending in .XMP that matches the base filename of your .NEF file is a text file in XML format that stores the metadata for your NEF file.  It is a standard type created by Adobe and adopted by a great number of other applications like Photo Mechanic.

Yes, you can back them up, both the NEF and the XMP file.

Since you mentioned performance: XMP sidecar files don't make the ingest process appreciably faster or slower.

All I want to do now is backup the raw photos (the .NEF, not the JPEGs) I ingested and culled using Photo Mechanic onto my external hard drive so that I can delete them from my SD card and clear up some space. I just worry that if I back them up as the .NEF/.XMP that I won't be able to use them later.

Rest assured that you'll be able to use them later in a number of applications used for digital photography.

You might wonder why I don't just move the photos straight from the SD card onto my external hard drive. I can't really do that because it has ALL the photos from the day and I only want to back up the ones I culled. I renamed the photos on ingest and I deleted the ones I didn't want using Photo Mechanic, so it would be nearly impossible for me to figure out which files on the SD card are the ones I kept during the culling process.

No problem with that workflow.

If the service you upload to for your client gallery is supported by one of the Upload templates in Photo Mechanic, then you can upload as JPEG directly to your service from the NEF without having to make separate JPEG files.  The preview contained within the NEF file will be used to create a temporary JPEG which will be uploaded to your service and when it completes, the temporary file will be deleted.

HTH,

-Kirk

[ODThomas]

FYI. The .nef file is your camera’s raw file format, as you know. The .xmp file is a text file that contains metadata and any edits made to the raw file, exposure,  crops,  copyright info, tags etc. This is data that shouldn’t be written to your raw file, there is only one raw format I know of that can be written to, that’s .dng files.

These two files together (.nef and .xmp) are the ingredients and recipe, so to speak, that are used to create the jpegs, or any other non raw file format used for export to client libraries etc.

If you back up your raw file and it has edits, you need to back up the corresponding .xmp file too, otherwise you will lose your edits.

A useful video: https://youtu.be/oMRXAbxtanw

[Victoria S]

You might wonder why I don't just move the photos straight from the SD card onto my external hard drive. I can't really do that because it has ALL the photos from the day and I only want to back up the ones I culled. I renamed the photos on ingest and I deleted the ones I didn't want using Photo Mechanic, so it would be nearly impossible for me to figure out which files on the SD card are the ones I kept during the culling process.

No problem with that workflow.

If the service you upload to for your client gallery is supported by one of the Upload templates in Photo Mechanic, then you can upload as JPEG directly to your service from the NEF without having to make separate JPEG files.  The preview contained within the NEF file will be used to create a temporary JPEG which will be uploaded to your service and when it completes, the temporary file will be deleted.

HTH,

-Kirk

So, I'm using Pixieset as my online client gallery so they can just view and pick favorite photos before I even make any edits to them. I want to upload the photos directly onto Pixieset after culling with photo mechanic, before making any edits. Your suggestion didn't work. Uploading just the .NEF (without the XMP) into Pixieset didn't create a temporary JPEG that was compatible. It seems I'm able to upload the NEF to Google Drive, though it still shows its NEF rather than a JPEG. Does it have something to with the "upload template" you mentioned? I'm not sure what that means.

So right now I'm backing up triplicates as separate JPEGs and NEF files directly from the SD card because I'm afraid of deleting the original raw photos if I'm limited with what I can do with the NEF/XMP.

[MNeipris]

Pixieset is not a supported service in Photo Mechanic's File Uploader. A full list of supported services can be found by navigating to the File Uploader window (File-->Upload...), then select the dropdown picker to the right of "Selected Uploader:".

Since you are not able to use a Photo Mechanic uploader template to send the files to Pixieset, you will need to manually create JPEG files from the NEF files.

To reiterate what others have mentioned, the NEF files are the RAW files created by the Nikon camera. For a longer explanation of the NEF filetype, see: https://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/a/products-and-innovation/nikon-electronic-format-nef.html

It appears that Pixieset only supports JPEG, PNG, and GIF image file types. It does not support RAW file types such as NEF. https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002900632-File-size-and-format-requirements-for-Pixieset

With that said, here is a suggestion.

- Set your Nikon camera to record both RAW+JPEG (NEF+JPEG). You should be able to find this ability in your camera's Photo Shooting menu option that has the camera icon.

You can then ingest both of those file types with Photo Mechanic. https://docs.camerabits.com/support/solutions/articles/48000207409-ingesting-photos-with-photo-mechanic

Note: if RAW and JPEG files exist in the same folder, Photo Mechanic will combine them in the contact sheet view and only show one thumbnail per image. To see both the RAW and JPEG file in the contact sheet, use the Control-J keyboard shortcut to toggle this feature off. You can also toggle the View-->Combined Images menu option.

Once you make your selection of keepers, you can upload the JPEG file(s) created by the camera into Pixieset's web page uploader.

Once your client makes their selection of favorites in the web gallery of JPEG files, you can make a list of those filenames to later find the associated NEF files in Photo Mechanic.

When you find the associated NEF files (they should have the same filename as the JPEG files) in Photo Mechanic, you can then make a selection of those NEF files to send to a RAW editing program that allows you to make color edits and adjustments to the images.

After you make the edits to the NEF files in your photo editing software, you can have your photo editing software export new JPEG files that will reflect the edits you made to the images, then upload those new JPEG files to Pixieset to send the final images to your client.

[Kevin M. Cox]

Not sure if this old-school metaphor works for you, but...

Think of your RAW .NEF files as film; the XMP files as the instructions on how to develop them; and the JPGs as prints.

You clients can't work with the negatives (RAW) and they won't go in easy to view albums (Pixieset); you've gotta make prints (JPG) for the clients to view.

You can always throw away the unneeded prints (JPGs) later after the client is done with them, because you have the negatives (RAW/XMP) so you can make new prints anytime you need.