gorgehiker Loc: Lexington, Ky

I have a lot of downward arrows in the upper right corners of my thumbnail images in my LR catalog. Should I use the "Save Metadata to File" command on all of these images? Advantages? Disadvantages? Thanks for any advice - this forum is wonderful!

brucewells Loc: Central Kentucky

Any change you make to the photo in LR should be written to the file as metadata, assuming it's an edit you want to keep. That metadata includes EXIF data that you've edited and edits you have made to the photo. Even if you change the Color Label, that info is written to the file when you save the metadata. I can think of no reason NOT to write that data to the image.

LR keeps up with the edits you perform on an image and when it displays that image, it is displayed with all of those edits rendered. But, if you copy that file out to another location to edit with some other software, your edits will not be included unless you have saved the metadata.

flyguy Loc: Las Cruces, New Mexico

You can quickly save the data by using this keyboard shortcut:

cmd s --- I do so with every change I make to an image in Lightroom, whether it is key wording, or toning, printing, etc.

It's great insurance, that and always backing up to redundant external hard drives!