Building Metadata Presets in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom v3

June 2010 Update: Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 makes building a Metadata Preset even more useful for the professional photographer. In Lightroom 3, we photographers now have access to a new set of metadata fields where we can record critical things like our model or property release information. Check out the new video tutorial and then read the rest of this article.

Metadata is the key to organization in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. It helps us find exactly the image(s) we need among the hundreds or thousands of images in our catalogs. It holds our copyright and contact information so it can accompany our images when we share them with others.

Much of the information we add to our photos is quite redundant. In other words, all of our photos share essentially the same contact, creator, and copyright information. We can save time and keystrokes by using a “Metadata Preset” to “stamp” this information onto groups of photos as you import them.

Creating a Metadata Preset

Open Lightroom and choose “Edit Metadata Presets…” from the Help menu.

Choose Edit Metadata Presets from the Metadata Menu

There are lots of metadata fields listed in this dialog box. We’re going to fill in the relevant information in certain fields and save it as a preset to be applied to images later.

If a checkbox is checked beside a particular field, then the corresponding field will be altered on any image to which the preset is applied. If you write something in the “Caption” field and check the box beside it, any existing caption would be overwritten on any image that this preset was applied to. Likewise, if the “Caption” field is left blank with the check box checked, any existing caption would be erased on any image that this preset was applied to. So we need to be very careful to make sure that we only check boxes next to fields that we want active in this preset.

Click the “Check None” button at the bottom of the Edit Metadata Presets dialog box.

Click the Check None button to clear all checkboxes.

In this example, we’re going to create a preset that you could conceivably apply to all of your images. It will contain our copyright and contact information.

Let’s go through the Edit Metadata Presets dialog box and fill out any of the relevant fields. Remember, only fill out the information that could be applied to all of the photos taken by you. For me, that would be the following fields:

• Copyright – A simple copyright statement works here. Mine says “© Scott W. Rouse.” Click here for our tutorial video on creating the copyright symbol while typing inside of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom if you don’t know the keyboard shortcuts for this important marking. For more information on the importance of copyright, and how to fully protect your work, please check out this tutorial on copyright law and photography from the American Society of Media Photographers.
• Copyright Status – Choose Copyrighted from the drop-down list.
• Rights Usage Terms – I enter “All Rights Reserved” in this field just to make it clear. Legally, this information is implied, but it never hurts to add it.
• Copyright Info URL – I keep a page on my photography website that provides details on my copyright and licensing options for my images. http://scottrousephotography.com/copyright.html
• Creator – The Creator field, and those that follow, are pretty self-explanatory. I fill out everything in the IPTC Creator section, and you should do the same.

Completed and Checked Fields in the Edit Metadata Presets Dialog

Once you’ve entered your information, let’s save it for later. From the drop-down menu at the top of the Edit Metadata Presets dialog, choose Save Current Settings as New Preset.

Choose Save Current Settings as New Preset

Name the preset whatever you’d like and click Create.

Name Your Preset

Click Done at the bottom of the Edit Metadata Presets box.

Click Done

Now, let’s test our new preset. Make sure you’re in the Library Module by tapping the “g” key on your keyboard. Click on one of your images to select it.

On the right-hand side of the Lightroom interface, look for the Metadata panel and make sure that it’s visible.

At the top of the Metadata panel, click on the Preset drop-down menu and select your newly-created preset.

Select your new preset from the drop-down menu.

That will fill-in all of the metadata fields for that image that we had previously specified when we created our preset. Scroll down and check out the Contact or Copyright fields to make sure it worked.

Filled-in Fields

Check out the following video for a demonstration of the steps above.

Applying Your Preset on Import

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could have this information applied to our images as we brought them into Lightroom with little extra effort on our part? Well, you guessed it. We can!

Applying a metadata preset on import is very simple. Once the Import Photos dialog is up, all you need to do is select your preset from the Metadata drop-down menu and click the Import button.

Selecting an Import Metadata Preset

Other Uses for Metadata Presets

As I said before, metadata is very useful when it comes to trying to find specific images in your catalog. I make metadata presets almost anytime I’ll be making more than a few imports where that information may apply.

For example, if I were shooting a wedding, I’d probably fill in all of the relevant metadata fields for that shoot and save it as a preset to be applied upon import. In addition to the contact and copyright information we used before, I could probably go ahead and fill out location information and Job Identifier.

You can have as many metadata presets as you’d like.

Editing Existing Metadata Presets

If you’ve created a metadata preset or two and you’d like to make a change to it, that’s no problem at all. To edit an existing metadata preset:

1. Bring up your list of presets by choosing “Edit Metadata Presets…” from the Metadata menu.


Choose Edit Metadata Presets from the Metadata Menu

2. From the Preset drop-down menu at the top of the Edit Metadata Presets dialog box, select the name of the preset you’d like to edit.


Select the name of the preset you'd like to edit.

3. Make whatever changes you’d like to make to your preset. In the screen shot below, I’ve changed the state from “MT” to “Montana.” Look at the top of the dialog box, and you’ll see that the preset name now has “(edited)” added to end. Don’t click the Done button yet…


Make your changes.

4. From the Preset drop-down at the top of the dialog box, choose “Update Preset.”


Choose Update Preset

5. Now you can click Done.

Click Done

You’ve updated your metadata preset but, Lightroom doesn’t go through and change the metadata on images to which the old version of this preset was applied. Does that sentence make sense? Hmmm… What I mean is: If you’ve previously stamped a group (or all) of your images with a certain metadata preset, updating that metadata preset using the method described above does not change any metadata in your photos.

To update the metadata in your images:

1. Select the images you’d like to change.
2. At the top of the Metadata panel, click on the Preset drop-down menu and select your newly-updated preset.


Select your newly-updated preset from the drop-down menu.

3. Your updated information will now be in the proper metadata fields.

Your updated contact information.

This video demonstrates the process of changing a metadata preset once you’ve created it.

Deleting a Metadata Preset

You may find yourself with metadata presets that you would like to get rid of so they don’t clutter up your Preset menu or something. To delete a metadata preset:

1. choose “Edit Metadata Presets…” from the Help menu.


Choose Edit Metadata Presets from the Metadata Menu

2. Select the name of the preset you’d like to delete from the Preset drop-down menu at the top of the Edit Metadata Presets dialog box.


Select the name of the preset you'd like to delete.

3. Now, from the same drop-down menu, select “Delete Preset”


Select Delete Preset

4. Once you click Delete in the confirmation dialog, your metadata preset will be moved to your computer’s trash/recycle bin and will no longer appear in Lightroom.

As with modifying a preset, no changes to the metadata of your images will be made.

This video demonstrates the process of deleting a metadata preset.

All of the videos from this article can be viewed at the Working with Metadata Presets in Lightroom Album at Vimeo.

Filed Under: (03) Importing • (04) Organizing Your Photography • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials

Tags: import • metadata • preset • template • video • Workflow