Lightroom 3 and XMP File Ranking Compatability

[pjsinger44]

There seems to be a lack of communication between Lightroom 3 and FPV as regards to the star rankings stored in the XMP file. When I rank a RAW file in FPV an XMF file is created. If the file is then imported into Lightroom 3 everything is fine, the star ranking shows up in FPV. However, if I now change the ranking in either program the change does not get communicated to the other program.

The "Automatically write changes into XMP" option is checked in Lightroom 3. The "Create/Update Adobe XMP sidecar files" is checked in FPV. I am using Canon 7D RAW files. The operating system is Windows 7.

Should FPV and Lightroom 3 be communicating rankings changes? If so, any idea as to why it isn't working for me?

[Axel]

Check that the XMP sidecar file is actually modified by Ligthroom. If not, tweak your Lightroom settings until it actually writes out new sidecars, and also mare sure that the updated sidecars are next to the images as viewed from FPV.

Additionally, you must make sure that the labels within Lightroom are set to default values, namely “Red”, “Yellow”, “Green”, “Blue” and “Purple” (there is no common standard for such labels, they are just text and the text needs to match exactly across all applications, LR, Bridge, FPV etc, if you want interoperability).

[sckpsn]

I don't have Lightroom 3, yet, but in my experience Lightroom 1 and Lightroom 2 did not consistently write out XMP updates, even when the "Automatically write changes into XMP" option was checked. Thus, I always do a manual write to file before going to another application that will be using the sidecars.

[Axel]

Yes it could be something "technical" on LR side but the most probable cause is a mismatch between the label's names.

Contrary to the XMP Rating, which uses a well-defined numeric scale from 1 to 5, XML labels are just arbitrary text that sometime can be redefined by the user.

If someone renames the "Red" label to some other word or short sentence, this breaks the compatibility with all other XMP clients as other applications will not understand the new word and will likely ignore the value.

What would be needed are mapping tables in every app, to interpret various values written by every other apps, and perhaps this would at least partially solve the issue.

For a lack of a better solution, I find it's best to stick with the default LR convention ("Red", "Yellow", etc) as it maximizes the chances that other applications, including FPV, will read and interpret the data successfully.

FastPictureViewer Professional understands the default presets from a number of popular applications including Adobe Lightroom, IDimager, Nikon ViewNX and Microsoft ExpressionMedia, and can be configured in the program options to follow one or the other of those conventions.

Hopefully other XMP aware application also follow at least one of these conventions by default so there are good chances that a common ground can be found across two or three apps that a given user is susceptible to own, but again the user can ruin all this by renaming the labels, if only by starting to have inconsistent label values within his own picture collection.

The best is to pick one convention, say Lightroom's, and align all apps to it and never rename the labels.

The actual interpretation of the "color" should then be made "outside" of the system, for example on a Post It note that says Red=Publish, Yellow=For Review, etc.

Ideally, a mapping table in the applications would let the programs display "Publish" (or whatever) on-screen, but read/write "Red" in the underlying XMP data, i.e. provide one level of indirection which allows users to rename labels freely without breaking the underlying convention (just thinking out loud: this is what I'd do if I was writing a DAM... )