Allow the Lightroom Plug-in to Refresh all Metadata without Republishing the Image

Jtring

This one has been around before (e.g., at http://dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=241176), but I'm not sure it ever made it explicitly into the Feature Request list. It would be very helpful if the Lightroom plug-in had some way to refresh all the metadata without re-publishing the entire picture. Right now, a caption, title, or keyword change (maybe a few others) will lead to a re-publish that just updates these without resending everything. That's not the case with other metadata.

I just hit this one again. I wanted to update the copyright field on my photos. (I recently turned off right click protection and have put up a Creative Commons license statement on my site. I wanted to include a flag to that effect in the picture metadata too.) The only way to do so would have been to re-load everything. I compromised: I reloaded a small portion of my pictures, but even that used most of my bandwidth for an afternoon, plus, of course, a smidge of SM's bandwidth.

Back in September, I had a discussion with David Parry, the Lightroom plug-in developer, on this topic via the help desk. I had a metadata refresh issue of the same general sort, but with different details. He noted to me there had been some discussion about total metadata refreshes but that there were arguments both ways.

I'd like to weigh in here that at least for my usage, having a low-bandwidth way to update all the metadata would be very welcome. I've now hit this one twice, and may yet again.

Jim Ringland
jtringl.smugmug.com

splinkyhoo

This thread is a blast from the past, but....I agree, I just came across a need for this today.

I see two possible improvement scenarios here:

1. Automate the full republish process on metadata refreshes: Increase the number of republish metadata triggers in the Lightroom plugin beyond the existing ones (caption, capture time, GPS, headline, keywords, title) to include copyright/copyright status.

2. Allow metadata refreshes of any kind independent of updating the actual photos (which is clearly the better option).

Thanks! I don't see this on the 'vote for improvements' list here: http://feedback.smugmug.com/forums/17723-smugmug
Am I missing it?

AperturePlus

Jim, having just had some issues (unrelated) with the plugin, David told me that the plugin has been reworked to accommodate this: http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1943578&postcount=5

It could be that your plugin is outdated? The most recent that I am using, does replace only metadata if the image is unchanged. Having said that, I find that some images get replaced as well, so it might need a little tweaking.

Regards
Clive

Jtring

My original post is rather old, but I'm current with version 2.1 of the plugin. I rechecked and the behavior is still not what I'd like to see. As a test, I changed the copyright statement for a photo I posted a few years ago. The plug-in did not flag it as needing to be republished. When I manually flagged the photo to be republished, and then hit the Publish button, I got the full upload. The metadata I've had to refresh via a full upload are photo times (i.e., I didn't enter in a change of time zone or a change to or from daylight-savings/summer time into the camera promptly) and copyright changes. Captions, titles, keywords, and the like can be refreshed without a full re-upload.

Jim Ringland
jtringl@mindspring.com