abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

I am working in Lightroom. Can I pitch the sidecars? Is that information already in the catalog?

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

don't think so. But if you import as dng, they are combined into the image file. Yes, it is a commitment to Nikon, but makes file management a bit easier.

Dngallagher Loc: Wilmington De.

Yes, you can....

The edits/changes are maintained in Lightroom's catalog for each image, if you elect to write xmp data to the sidecar files then it is in two places. If you delete the sidecar files, then the edits would not be available in applications other than Lightroom.

FWIW - I keep my XMP data in sidecars and in my catalog - provides interapplication use and serves as a backup of my edits for each image.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

I have always kept my raws in LR and never saw that I had a need for dng's.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

I stick to LR and PS so I do not need dng's and sidecars for other apps. Since I backup with Carbonite, I am not sure I need the sidecars for additional safety.

Thanks for answering.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

I guess above my pay grade.

AZNikon Loc: Mesa, AZ

bigwolf40 Loc: Effort, Pa.

The only sidecars that I know are drinks you can get in a bar made with brandy ....Rich

Jack 13088 Loc: Central NY

Yes, you can pitch the sidecars (and stop creating them) since the information is in the catalog (and is what LR uses.) I do. Since I exclusively use LR to manage ALL photos I have the copyright for, I consider PS to be a plug-in to LR. In that case the meta data in the side car is of no use. Like myself it just takes up space. I backup the catalog every time I close LR off site and all that. Hence, the sidecar which contains less information than the catalog is not my choice for a backup. An added benefit is the original images, including those formats that don’t need sidecars (dng, jpeg, tiff, ...), never need backup because of edits.

If you stop writing sidecars without deleting those you have already written LR will flag the images where the metadata has been changed and allows you to pick which one to use. Annoying! So pitch them.

abc1234 Loc: Elk Grove Village, Illinois

Thank you. When I get a chance, I will finally delete them. No one gave a compelling reason to use them. They were left over from another program used before LR.