Adobe Lightroom and XMP Sidecars

Don't make this mistake. A lesson I learned early on in my career that hopefully I can prevent you from making as well. This video covers the need for xmp sidecar files when working in Adobe Lightroom, what they mean and the importance of having lightroom metadata written to your raw files. Without the metadata being written to the .xmp sidecar file all of your work done within lightroom is not connected to the images outside of the Catalogue file. This should be checked by default however I have come across numerous sites saying to disable writing metadata to the xmp in order to speed up Lightroom.

[@KevinDeadwylier]

Nice video here's a suggestion for you. Convert your RAW files to DNG. With a DNG file, all the information is embedded in the file, so there is no need for a sidecar file.

[@raincoastphoto]

I used to use DNG years ago but stopped for some reason. Looking into and it still looks like you need to have the write to xmp boxed checked in order to have the data written to the dng file as well. I haven't checked it myself but reading online it still looks like you need to have this box checked in order to have all the lightroom adjustments written to the dng and not just stored in the catalogue file

[@FRY_FPV]

Thank you for your video. Does that save all settings including masks/linear gradient etc?

[@FRY_FPV]

Does that mean you can remove the photos from your catalog and reimport them into another catalog and you get all your edits? I edit all photos on my laptop but then i moved them via the Finder and they were gone. I reimported them and lost my edits

[@raincoastphoto]

in theory, but when you move them you have to make sure you move the sidecar (xmp) files as well.