Where are xmp files?

divamum · April 20, 2012

Short version for those who haven't been following my recent saga: recent computer freakout resulted in need to format HDD and reinstall the OS. Essential data files were, thankfully, backed up, but I'm still going through the torturous task of restoring everything. Gah, what a pain.

In any case, I have photoshoots - ie the images - backed up in various places. I had not, however, specifically backed up Lightroom or, to the best of my knowledge, xmp files. I don't even know where xmp files live :scratch

Is the info from the xmp's somehow embedded in the actual files, or am I completely duffed up? Where would I look for them?

Soooooo hoping I don't have to re-edit things from scratch....

ETA: yes, I did have the foresight to save my presets and actions. I am SO GLAD I did a big reorganization and backup a while back. I have TRA, Florabella and a few other purchased sets and would have been really upset to lose them!

Art Scott · April 20, 2012

My XMP files sit right next to the raw file ... it is a text doc and looks just like a flat piece of paper ....DNG's don't use the XMP sidecar...

digismile · April 20, 2012

This is a depends answer. In lightroom you can select whether the changes to the image are written to XMP or not.

Look under Catalog Preferences->Metadata. If the "Write changes to XMP" is checked, you will find the xmp files next to the original photo. Otherwise I think the changes are part of the LR catalog.

Richard · April 20, 2012

What happens when you open an old pic in LR? Does the develop panel show your custom settings or only the LR defaults?

Dan7312 · April 20, 2012

When you import images into LR it copies the images files to whatever directory you have configured LR to save images in. By default, unless you have changed it, LR saves the xmp data in the LR database, so in the default configuration you won't be able to see the xmp data because it is stored inside of the LR database.

LR has an option to save the XMP data in an .xmp file next to the image file it imports, it's called a sidecar file because it is stored "beside" the image file. You can, if you want, after the fact have LR create sidecar files for your images.

But if you don't see a bunch of .xmp files in the same directory where LR has imported your images and you couldn't restore LR database I think you are OOL and have lost your xmp data.

divamum wrote: »

Short version for those who haven't been following my recent saga: recent computer freakout resulted in need to format HDD and reinstall the OS. Essential data files were, thankfully, backed up, but I'm still going through the torturous task of restoring everything. Gah, what a pain.

In any case, I have photoshoots - ie the images - backed up in various places. I had not, however, specifically backed up Lightroom or, to the best of my knowledge, xmp files. I don't even know where xmp files live

Is the info from the xmp's somehow embedded in the actual files, or am I completely duffed up? Where would I look for them?

Soooooo hoping I don't have to re-edit things from scratch....

ETA: yes, I did have the foresight to save my presets and actions. I am SO GLAD I did a big reorganization and backup a while back. I have TRA, Florabella and a few other purchased sets and would have been really upset to lose them!

divamum · April 20, 2012

Haven't had time to import and check in LR yet but 1. no sidecar xmps that I can see 2 I didn't have the LR catalog backed up anywhere (note to self: ADD THAT FILE TO THE BACKUP LIST!!). Bugger. Because the catalog is in a programs directory and I thus completely forgot about it (in my pea-brain it = "system file".), it wasn't something I backed up either locally or on CP. I get a big ole "duh" for that omission....

Oh well. Fortunately, the images are entirely saved and photos CAN be re-edited, it's just a big ole pain to have to re-do them as needed ....

Richard · April 20, 2012

In Windows, the convention is to store important user-created application data in C:\Documents and Settings\UserName\Application Data\Adobe\... If you were backing up Documents and Settings\*.* you might still have your old catalog in there, assuming Adobe is following the convention. If not, well, you're probably out of luck.

divamum · April 23, 2012

Ok, so I made a big ole hash of that

:cry :bash Have now set it up so xmp's will be sidecars and thus always attached to the files. That'll work.

Next question: is there a way to get LR to automatically save a second copy of the catalog to a destination I select every time it updates?

Pupator · April 23, 2012

My Lightroom installation asks me weekly (when I close the app) about backing up the database file. Does yours not?

Dan7312 · April 23, 2012

I think crashplan is already giving you what you want.

I don't think there is a way to save the catalog to two different places.

But you are using crashplan. It keeps track of every version of the catalog it saves. That's one of the pluses of using crashplan. Here are some of the versions my LR cat that crashplan has backed up for me.

So you can always go back to any catalog version you want. There is one gotcha. Crashplan doesn't do continous backup, it does backups on the schedule you set. I have mine set to do a backup every 15min.

Crashplan doesn't backup the whole file though, only the file blocks that change, so the impact of doing a backup every 15 minutes isn't that great.

However if you bring up the Crashplan application (right mouse button on the crashplan icon in the tray, show application) you can force a backup an any time. So remember to do that before you do an update and you will make a snapshot of your current version. In fact I do this whenever I add add images or videos to my system.

I don't know if that was clear, but just ask about anything that doesn't make sense.

divamum wrote: »

Ok, so I made a big ole hash of that :cry :bash Have now set it up so xmp's will be sidecars and thus always attached to the files. That'll work.

Next question: is there a way to get LR to automatically save a second copy of the catalog to a destination I select every time it updates?

Pupator · April 23, 2012

I just double-checked. The automatic Lightroom backup can be saved wherever you want and done as often as you want.

divamum · April 23, 2012

Dan7312 wrote: »

I think crashplan is already giving you what you want.

I don't think there is a way to save the catalog to two different places.<<<>>>.

Thanks Dan. Yes, I've now added the lrcat files to my crashplan backup, so I can avoid a repeat of this situation. I'm just annoyed I didn't have the xmp's as sidecars; I know I did at some point (maybe LR2?) but, for whatever reason, they clearly weren't set up like that before this in the iteration of LR I was using at the time of the crashalanche. What's so annoying is I could so easily have done this if I'd thought about it, I just completely forgot about it in my frustration with trying to keep the machine running for more than 12 minutes at a time.

Ah well. It's always like this when you have to format and start from scratch. No matter how well you think you've got everything, something always seems to get missed....

My Lightroom installation asks me weekly (when I close the app) about backing up the database file. Does yours not?

Yes, it does. I had left my catalogs in the default location, however, which wasn't one I've been backing up either locally or via CP. A sad - although, thankfully, not catastrophic - omission, now remedied by my adding it to the crashplan list!

Btw, the computer has been running perfectly again since I did the clean re-install of the OS, so I guess whatever the problem, it was software rather than hardware.

Art Scott · April 23, 2012

The XMP sidecar was one reason I started using dng's...all that data just goes with the dng...no sidecar needed....so I can't forget to add the data to my back ups....

cmason · April 24, 2012

You don't have to use XMPs. The benefit is that it has details on the last edit you made (not all edit history). I suppose this is better than, ahem, nothing in your case. But backing up the LR database will have a similar benefit to making XMPs, with the difference that the LR database has all your edit history for every file.

XMPs have the ability to be portable to other programs as well, though I am not sure what other programs use them?

Anyway, I don't use XMP, I just backup my LR database (yep in 3 places): 1) Carbon Copy Cloner image of the entire HD. 2) Timemachine backup on external network drive, 3) Crashplan. (oh and plus LR does a backup too).

Where are xmp files?

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