The Mega-Important Automatically Write Changes into XMP Switch
I posted an article recently on the Adobe Photoshop Lightroom’s Preferences Menu. There are some important buttons in that article, but perhaps the most important switch in the whole program lives elsewhere. I know that preference menus are not exciting stuff, but trust me. This one is absolutely worth your time and attention.
I would argue that the most important preference switch in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom lives inside of the Catalog Settings menu. To find these buttons, Windows users go Edit > Catalog Settings > Metadata from the menu bar at the top of the screen. Mac users will find the exact same buttons in the Lightroom > Catalog Settings > Metadata menu.
Future articles will talk about the other two tabs within the Catalog Settings menu. Today’s article is all about the “Automatically write changes into XMP” switch which lives inside of the Metadata tab.
Lightroom Catalog Settings Metadata Dialogue
When I teach classes, I call this the “happiness vs. unhappiness switch” and from the factory it is set to unhappiness! The good folks at Adobe make fantastic software, but they don’t always pick the best words for their buttons and knobs. “Automatically write changes into XMP” should have been labeled “Auto-Save.”
If you turn this option ON then all of your metadata, and your develop settings, are automatically written into your images. All of your changes are pressed into your file’s storage area which is called the XMP data block. Think of this as if it were a constant “save my work right now” option!
If you don’t turn this switch on then all of your changes and improvements are stored temporarily inside of your Lightroom Catalog file. Your metadata, and improvements, will not be pressed into your images until you click the elusive “Save Metadata to File” button. By turning the automatically write changes switch on, you never need to find or press this button. Once you switch this on, your work is continuously saved behind the scenes.
Failure to save your changes down to the file level will cause you enormous problems if your Lightroom Catalog ever gets corrupted or deleted. If your Lightroom Catalog file gets destroyed, and you have not pressed your changes down to the file level, then all of your work will be lost!
Not saving your work down to the file level will also cause you great frustration if you try to open your images outside of Lightroom. If you were to open one of your images directly into another program like the Adobe Bridge, Adobe Photoshop, iPhoto, or Apple’s Aperture, without saving your work down to the file level then all of your improvements will be missing! If your metadata, and develop settings, are not written into your image’s XMP block then no other program will see any sign of your hard work.
Please watch this short presentation to learn more about this vital switch.
To truly understand the advantages, and disadvantages, of the “Automatically Write Changes to XMP” preference switch please watch this excellent tutorial from Adobe Evangelist Julieanne Kost.
For more information please check out this article by Lightroom expert Martin Evening. I also recommend watching Adobe Lightroom Evangelist George Jardine’s excellent “Where Are My Pictures?” podcast.
Filed Under: (01) Getting Started • Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tutorials
About the Author: David Marx is a digital photography instructor whose engaging teaching style inspires photographers of all skill levels. David is an Adobe Certified Photoshop and Photoshop Lightroom Expert. David has led Adobe Photoshop / Photoshop Lightroom seminars and digital photography field workshops for The Rocky Mountain School of Photography, FirstLight Workshops, The American Society of Media Photographers, and the world-renowned Blackberry Farm Resort. To learn more about David's software seminars and field photography workshops, please visit 
Oh my god.
Wish I read this sooner. Should be a default setting in LR.
Just lost changes on 6800 photos after the dire lightroom 4 corrupted all my files, so ‘upgraded’ to 3.6. no problems since but couldn’t get my changes back no matter what.
Gutted, but at least I have my raws and I keep all my jpegs archived.
Dear Paul Scott Thomas,
Sorry to hear that you lost so much hard work. Turning on the “Automatically Write Changes to XMP” preference switch when you first started using Lightroom might have saved you some of this pain but it too is no substitute for a robust backup plan. See Professional-Grade Backup Plans for more advice that is probably too little and too late :<
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David Marx
Wow, this was extremely clear and helpful. Thank you. Sadly, I’m only discovering this because I have probably just lost a month’s work. But now I understand.
When I had Lightroom 1, it seemed to create XMP files automatically to go with my .CR2s, and I understood that these were sidecar files that contained my post-processing information. (I thought Lightroom was actually reading the XMPs to show my edits.) After I switched to Lightroom 2(.7), there stopped being XMP files, yet Lightroom continued to show the edits. I found this baffling but didn’t understand the ramifications until now.
Dear Rita,
A common confusion. XMP means two things in digital photography. To make life confusing this abbreviation is the type of file that Lightroom and other sophisticated Adobe programs use when working with camera raw files. XMP sidecar files store metadata for propreitary camera raw files. Adobe uses these files when it cannot store the additional metadata like your copyright info, keywords, and develop settings inside the file’s data block. This is what you were seeing with your CR2s.
Unfortunately, XMP also means the data block within a jpeg file, a tif file, a psd file, etc. This is the portion of the file where data–metadata can be written–without changing the visible pixels. I suspect that you found the “Save Changes to Metadata” switch back in Lightroom 1 or that you were working with raw files that you used with another program like the Adobe Bridge. You saw the sidecars for your Cr2′s because some Adobe program created them. But because you never found this preference switch, or pressed the Metadata > Save Metadata to File button, in Lightroom 2 and 3 your changes to all types of files were never pressed down.
Your changes exist, or existed, only at the Lightroom Catalog level. As you can tell from my video I don’t like this but as long as you still have your Lightroom Catalog it’s not a disaster. Turn the switch on now, or invoke the Save Metadata to File command with all your thumbnails selected, and your work will be pressed down. It’s only a disaster if your Lightroom Catalog is gone and you have no backup plan…..
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David Marx
Sorry, in my previous post (above), I meant to say….
“I’m just learning LR3. In Finder on my MBP, I usually ARRANGE files as follows:”
Sam Ling
Hi,
I’m just learning LR3. In Finder on my MBP, I usually arrive files as follows:
2011
> 2011-01-01 (trip to Banff)
> 2011-02-10 (golf tournament)
> 2011-06-15 (camping trip)
In the above folder and sub-folder set-up, I IMPORTED into LR3 by selecting the root folder “2011″.
In the above example, what happens if I add additional sub-folders in Finder.
For example:
> 2011-11-20 (Thanksgiving)
In other words, should I import just the new sub-folder, or select the 2011 main folder again? Will my previous import be OVER-WRITTEN?
Thanks and sorry if this is too basic a question. I’m still learning.
Sam Ling
Dear Sam Ling,
The fundamental trouble here is that you are not yet using Lightroom to create your folders and sub-folders. Keep the ones that you have already created but from here on do all of this work from within Lightroom’s Library Module. See:
http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/06/importing-images-creating-an-import-preset-and-copying-in-files-from-a-digital-camera-memory-card-with-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-3/
http://thelightroomlab.com/2010/07/using-add-to-import-files-into-your-lightroom-index-without-moving-or-copying/
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/09/moving-folders-with-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/
Once the files are referenced into your Lightroom index you can move them from folder to folder, and rename the folders, from within the Library Module’s Folder Panel. (Most of the greatest features of this panel require a right-click!)
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David Marx
Hi,
Can you tell me WHEN lightroom does this automatic save ? Does it do it after every change ? Or does it do it periodically ?
I’m having issues, I can’t seem to get changes to appear in other programs still unless I manually do a metadata save.
thanks,
Dan
Dear Dan Carr,
Saving changes to each file’s metadata is supposed to happen immediately if you turn on this preference switch. If you are making changes to a massive number of files at once, or if you are using a very slow hard drive / drive connection, there maybe a delay but the process is supposed to begin immediately. With the ideal hardware the changes that you make should be saved down to the file’s metadata block level almost instantly.
The question that I would ask for follow up is what changes are you making and what other programs are you using to see the results?
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David Marx
David,
Thanks for the informative and important article.
I’m a Bridge user, however (haven’t been convinced to switch to Lightroom yet, for various reasons)… and have learned the database vs. XMP lesson the hard way (having once turned OFF the “save to XMP” feature in Bridge [because it's extremely annoying to have all those XMP files cluttering up everything]). However, having LOST most of my metadata (because of losing the Bridge metadata database–long story, no need to preach; I’m converted!), I realize that not losing all my years of work is much more annoying than having to live with a bunch of cluttery files.
However, my problem is that I cannot figure out (after a lot of online research/etc.) how to tell Bridge TO create the XMP files.
I’m sure(?) it’s a very simple yes/no answer SOMEWHERE–but the key word is “SOMEWHERE”!
Can you tell me how to force Bridge to always write to XMPs so I won’t have this horrible (and embarrassing) problem in the future?
Thanks!!
Aloha,
pt
Dear Philip Thomas,
Ah the confusion over what XMP means! XMP is the a shared set of metadata fields and code that allows textual information, like keywords, to work with files from a variety of cameras in any number of programs. Most digital file formats–jpeg, psd, tiff, doc, mp3, mov, etc–contain a data block that can hold the XMP metadata. Proprietary digital camera raw file formats sadly do not allow this internal data storage. These files require an “XMP sidecar” file because these brand specific camera raw formats cannot store the textual information internally. Only proprietary raw files require this extra hassle….
So the answer to your question is to let the Adobe Bridge save XMP data down to the file level. Most file’s will hold this information internally. For the odd-ball proprietary digital camera raw files Bridge will create XMP sidecar files for you. If this all seems like a needless and potentially confusing disaster consider repackaging your raw files using the DNG file format. For more see:
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/06/digital-camera-file-formats-raw-and-jpeg/
http://thelightroomlab.com/2009/06/converting-digital-camera-raw-files-to-the-dng-format-using-adobe-photoshop-lightroom/
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David Marx
I’m sorry!
Correcting myself: although it doesn’t show the modifications right away on the import screen, it appears after import, when it renders the previews.
If you “update DNG Previews and Metadata”, it will show the modifications right away on the import screen, but I believe it’s not necessary.
Dear Daniel,
Thanks for the update on your post. The previews that one sees in the Lightroom Import Dialog are not really trustworthy. Likewise, you can’t really see a file’s metadata until it has been imported. I don’t think that there is any reason for you to use the update DNG preview and metadata button. Save Metadata to file should work just fine.
If I may suggest though– why don’t you move your images and your Lightroom Catalog onto the external disk? True, you can only use the disk with one computer at a time but then you don;t have to import, export, synchronize, or move anything as you switch from computer to computer. See http://thelightroomlab.com/2011/03/where-should-i-keep-my-adobe-photoshop-lightroom-catalog/
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David Marx
Man, thank you very much for this REALLY vital information. For tutorial and your video. But I seem to have a different question, though…. I’ve been using Lightroom on a MacBook and my library is about 150.000 raw images. I keep them all on an external hard drive and the catalog and previews on the notebook hard drive. Now I bought myself an iMac and want to work on my images through both of them. When I started importing from the iMac I noticed the previews were not with my work on it – and that’s because I’ve used the program for three years before I read your article today.
(Never checked that box before.)
But the problem starts now….
I’ve plugged the external HD on the notebook, selected some worked on photographs through the notebook catalog and right-clicked it to “save metadata to file”. Then plugged the external HD on the iMac and tried to import them. They were still like nothing was done with them.
Then I tried other thing, the “update DNG preview and metadata”, plugged the HD back to the iMac, tried import again and only then it seemed to work.
Why is that? Any idea?
The “save metadata to file” didn’t seem to affect anything.
For the time it took to test about 200 pictures, updating DNG previews and metadata in 150.000 images will take like 2 years, I believe
Do you have any suggestion?
Thank you again!
Daniel
Wow, thanks Seth, this is the first time I have gotten confirmation that someone else is seeing this issue! I am not going crazy, then…
FYI, I have posted this issue in two different places that purport to provide LR support. Here are the links in case you would like to chime in with your experience or simply follow:
http://gsfn.us/t/2du7f
http://forums.adobe.com/thread/889074
Regards,
– David