I'm running 4.6.3 on Mac 10.6.3. I'm trying to develop a workflow with Lightroom that allows me to use PM for captioning but using LR for selects and rating.
When I set a rating for an image in LR a xap:Rating tag is set in the XML file. Assume I set a rating of 2, that is respected by PM fine, so I add a caption and read that into the Lightroom via a manual reading of the metadata in the XML.
Now, here's where the problem starts. Suppose I now want to set the rating of that image to zero. LR does this by deleting the xap tag rather than setting it to zero: <xap:Rating>0</xap:Rating>
When PM reads the XMP file it sees no xap tag but that it has a value of 2
<photomechanic:Prefs>0:0:2:002579</photomechanic:Prefs>
which was what it saw before the rating was changed to zero in LR.
This means that the rating stays at 2 in PM when it's been set to zero in LR. Since LR deletes the xap tag completely rather than setting it to zero PM doesn't know. To solve this...
2 proposed workarounds:
1. PM stops using its own Prefs setting so there's always a <xap:Rating>0</xap:Rating> in the XML file. If LR deletes it, PM will recreate it and set it to zero; or
2. Add a preference setting that essentially says:
"Assume xap:rating=0 if xap:tag is not present"
Have I got this correct? Is there a workaround or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks.