Sunday, 13 January 2019

metadata - How does Lightroom store data about photos?


I've seen numerous mentions of Lightroom's database, or catalog, and having to back it up. Being used to Bridge and Camera Raw, I'm accustomed to seeing sidecar .xmp files alongside my RAW files. These can easily be backed up with my RAW files since they are actual files.



Does Lightroom use sidecar files, same as Bridge, or does it use its own database for storage of image tags, metadata, etc? Or is it some combination?



Answer



Lightroom (on a Mac at least) has its own database, which it calls a catalog, which is stored and backed up separately from your image files. It's called 'Lightroom Catalog.lrcat'. There is an option in 'Catalog Settings' to 'Automatically write changes into XMP'.


The following page tells you more about how Lightoom handles metadata and adjustments:


http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Lightroom/3.0/Using/WS638E3AC9-A04C-4445-A0D3-F7D8BA5CDE37.html


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