Photomechanic 5 to Lightroom 4... back and forth

[spaceheat]

Operating System = OSX 10.6.8. Intel based Mac Pros.

I am having a problem going back and forth between LR4 and PM5. My workflow is as follows...

I do an initial sort in PM by applying color classes to RAW files. I import all the files into Lightroom 4 and the color classes show up just fine. Problems arise if I decide to go back into PM5 to apply new color classes (PM is way faster to work with than LR for this purpose). After doing this and then going back into LR, LR will not recognize the newly assigned color classes. It seems that LR will not recognize the new XMP and will overwrite the newly created XMP that was generated by PM5, after the RAW files were imported into LR.

Can someone direct me to what preferences need to change in order to work around this?

[spaceheat]

Apparently, if I remove the photos from the the LR catalog and re-import them, the newly assigned color classes will show up... so LR isn't overwriting that info, it's just not recognizing it unless it is there during the import.

[Kirk Baker]

You don't have to reimport the images.  Use the Read/Write commands on the Metadata menu in LR.  Use Write... when you're going to return to PM, and use Read... when you return to LR.

That should do it.  I understand there is also a preference to always update the XMP sidecar file when you change settings in LR, but I don't know the way it is worded or where to find it at this time.

HTH,

-Kirk

[spaceheat]

The preference to automatically update XMP is in the "Catalog Settings", under the Metadata Tab.

Thank you Kirk. I will experiment with "reading metadata from the files".

[spaceheat]

Can you detail what the settings need to be in PM5 prefs in order for this to work?

[Kirk Baker]

Can you detail what the settings need to be in PM5 prefs in order for this to work?

Well, essentially you want PM 5 to read/write XMP sidecar files for TIFF-based RAW files and embed XMP for JPEGs, TIFFs, PSDs, and DNGs.

You need to get your color class label names to match in both applications and that's about it.  You don't want to synchronize the IPTC Urgency with the Color Class since Adobe's software won't enforce that restriction.

But no matter your PM 5 settings, you have to get LR to update its internal database with the changes you make to the files with Photo Mechanic.  That's where LR's Metadata menu comes into play.

-Kirk

-Kirk

[spaceheat]

I have found that I needed to set the IPTC/XMP prefs to "Read from Sidecar XMP" for Tiff based RAW files... which seems to be the default setting. I must have changed it somewhere down the line while setting up the software, which would explain why I was having trouble.

It appears to be working for me now. Thanks Kirk!