Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Preferences Menu Part II: The Crtical Automatically Write to XMP Switch

I would argue that the most important preference switch in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom lives inside of the Catalog Settings menu. If you turn this option ON then all of your metadata, and your develop settings, are automatically written into your images. 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 your improvements, will not be pressed into your images until you click the elusive "Save Metadata to File" button. Failure to save your changes down to the file level will cause you enormous problems if your Lightroom Catalog ever gets corrupted or deleted.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Adobe Photoshop Lightroom
• Preferences
• Menu
• XMP
• Tutorial
• Save

[thelightroomlab]

Dear khazok,

Turning on the Automatically Write to XMP Switch preference switch tells Adobe Photoshop Lightroom to save your work down to each file's metadata block. This happens in the background so you do not need to do anything. If you want faster results though select your files then use the Metadata > Save Metadata to File command or right-click on one of your folder name's in the Library Module and use the Save Metadata to File command. Easy!

[volcanoblack]

I think your video is misleading. Changes you make to an image are written to the catalog, i.e. written to the hard drive. So your saying that saving metadata down to the file level is writing to the hard disk & if it is not turned on then you imply that no data is written to the hard drive & we are at jeopardy of losing our images. Which is not accurate.

This isn't the same as the power going out.

Catalog files occasionally get corrupted, use Lightroom's backup catalog feature regularly.

[001FJ]

Thanks a lot! I just bought Lightroom 3 two days ago and was wondering where is my xmp files? (I also use CS5 and it automatically saves my xmp files!) As soon as I turned on this option LR3 saved my xmp files :)

[50cliber]

how do you save your images because everytime i export it it just saves as the origional photo

[khazok]

Wonderful tip, it was my question for a while. Now I have a lot of pictures which I worked on them in Lightroom .So I much appreciate it if you could send a tip, how to update old pictures after active that option (windows)?

[khazok]

Wonderful tip, it was my question for a while

[trinchudofeo]

Great tip. Very informative. Thanks man.