I was recently troubleshooting a case with a friend where she would cull images on an SSD, rate them and give it away to editor and later find out that not all of her ratings were saved. She would miss almost half of her selections (443 vs 706). She even had a screenshot of those selects filtered in PM. And it was so random, so I advised her to start saving a selection to txt file as backup option
Max Lemesh, if your friend continues to experience this behavior, we can schedule a screen-sharing session with her to look into the behavior.
To get that process started, she can either send an email to support@camerabits.com or call our support phone 1-503-547-2888, Monday-Friday, 9AM-4PM Pacific Time.
Generally speaking, when an image is rated in Photo Mechanic and the star rating, color class, or tag state is visible in the contact sheet or Preview window, then the related metadata is saved either in an XMP sidecar file or embedded into the file itself.
An XMP sidecar file can be opened in a text editing program to confirm that Photo Mechanic wrote the related metadata.
For star ratings:
<xmp:Rating="Star Rating number here">
For color class:
<xmp:Label="Color Class Label name Here">