Metadata for iPhone 16 HEIC not visible in Lightroom for some files

[Neil MacAvoy]

Exec summary: Metadata I've set in PM for some of my iPhone 16 Pro HEIC files is not visible in Lightroom Classic. It's inconsistent, not a hard fail.

More details:
I recently switched from an iPhone 13 to an iPhone 16 Pro and discovered that the ancient version of PM I was on didn't understand the HEIC files I was generating with the new phone. So I re-upped to the subscription version of PM and was able to ingest/view/pick winners/add keywords & descriptions. That's all I do with PM, really not too exotic...no hierarchical keywords etc. So far, so good.

After I imported the files into Lightroom Classic, I discovered that for some (not all) of the images, LR isn't seeing the metadata. I can't see any obvious differences between the successful images and the ones that didn't come over correctly. I have some groups of images where I batch applied the identical metadata using the metadata Template dialog, and some of them worked while others didn't.

I did some basic searching and haven't been able to find any obvious explanation for what's happening. I can see that HEIC + xmp and/or metadata has been problematic from time to time. The problem statement I have looks very similar to this thread from 2022: https://forums.camerabits.com/index.php?topic=14856.0

Anyway, looking to see if there is a known issue and/or workaround. It's possible that things have re-broken latest helpful gratuitous upgrades by our friends in Cupertino.

My working conditions:

iPhone 16 Pro generating HEIC running IOS 18.1.1 currently but I'm sure some of the images were generated on earlier IOS 18 releases.
PhotoMechanicR7907_424
Windows 10 Pro build 19045
Lightroom Classic Version 14.0.1

I have attached one image that I added keywords and caption to that didn't translate properly to LR. Hopefully this is something known and fixable.

-Neil

[ahoward]

Hi Neil,

I think its more related to this thread: https://forums.camerabits.com/index.php?topic=16475.msg80193#msg80193

Take a look at Dennis's reply, as it gets more into the details than I could, but we think that you're dealing with the same thing. So the fix that we'll be making within Photo Mechanic is still a work in progress. I don't know of a workaround, as I have not personally reproduced the issue (it may be limited to images from the new phone), but maybe Gary's findings in the thread I linked will be helpful?

[Neil MacAvoy]

Ah, yes, I agree. That does look like the same problem description. Thanks for connecting me to the other thread.

If more sample images are useful, let me know. Otherwise, I will hang tight and wait for a release that hopefully fixes the issue.