mwsilvers Loc: Central New Jersey

Yes you can edit a jpegs, sometimes quite well. However, if you are shooting lower light subjects and you want to recover deep shadow details with minimal noise, the much greater latitude of raw files you mentioned is a very significant advantage. I stopped shooting jpeg altogether around 10 years ago and have never looked back.

globetrekker Loc: Bend, OR

I took these four steps. Now I notice that some photos have a question mark in the upper right, which indicates "Photo is missing". Why? I haven't moved any files.

Many other photos indicate "Metadata file needs to be updated". Again, I haven't done anything with those photos. What does LR want? I am not sure if I synced all the photos in the folder, or only the newest ones I added today. I don't think I tried to sync changes to all photos in the folder. But whatever I did seems to have triggered these two reactions in LR.

Appreciate any advice on how to fix these two issues.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

None of the suggestions involved moving the physical files on disk nor updating any of the metadata. Assuming you're now too far down the path to 'undo' the erroneous steps, you might simply confirm where the files now reside, on disk and outside LR. That is the first issue to resolve / recover. Find the RAW files and put them back where they belong in your organization approach.

Then, remove the images from the LR catalog. Remove only, not delete. Then, re-import the files and review the earlier steps again and assure you're only making Develop changes and syncing those Develop changes.

bleirer

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globetrekker Loc: Bend, OR

No comprendo. I did not move any files. The files are where they have always been. This is so strange. And annoying.

globetrekker Loc: Bend, OR

Update. It seems that only 7 photos are missing. I'm not worried about that (though curious about why this happened).

The metadata issue is vast though. Over 2,000 photos. I must have done something wrong with Sync, a function I have barely used.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

If they're new images, you can just remove from the catalog and re-import. Or, remove and import them from a back-up catalog if you've already done extensive edits. If RAW files, you cannot overwrite the RAW file, only create XML side cards. If need be, you can remove the side cards and restore the metadata from the original RAW.

You have to assess the extent of the problem and how much data has to be recovered, if any, and the recovery importance to then determine the corrective action.

If you've mistakenly selected 2000 image files, you should better prepare your work area to assure you've filtered the images to just those you intend to work with. This can be done by creating an ad-hoc collection and placing the specific images into the collection.

bleirer

I wonder if you did this https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/create-folders.html#Synchronizefolders

When you were supposed to do this. Scroll to Synchronize settings across multiple photos
https://helpx.adobe.com/lightroom-classic/help/develop-module-options.html#apply_develop_adjustments_to_other_photos

I don't know how to reverse it, perhaps using the backup of your catalog? I'd research this before doing anything.

globetrekker Loc: Bend, OR

When I noticed this metadata issue, I was just hovering with the mouse over the little icon and got the message "Metadata file needs to be updated". But if I actually click on the icon, I get a dialog that says "The metadata for this photo has been changed in LR. Save the changes to disk?" I think the metadata in question is the camera and lens models. Recall that I only realized today that I had not been shooting RAW. I only shot RAW for a few images today. So I think I must have synced in order to apply the new camera/lens data to all the images. Does that make sense? There is nothing wrong with metadata in any of these photos. Nothing to fix and nothing missing. It just seems that LR wants to know whether to save the changes. Is there an easy way to tell LR, yes, save these changes to disk for all these photos? Select them all, and then...?

Thanks for your patience and attempts to help. This is why UHH is a great forum.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

The metadata in the image file is probably correct, rather than from some other image you've mistakenly replicated inside LR. If you let LR write the changes from the LR catalog into the JPEG, that's a permanent change that is harder to undo, except from an uncorrupted back-up of the catalog and / or the image files.

There's a metadata menu command that lets you save from the catalog into the files or re-read the metadata from the files. You seem to be flailing a bit and maybe should pause for a moment and consider if / what you want to accomplish. The camera and lens data was in the JPEGs, likely correct, from the camera. If there's now a difference, it wouldn't seem like writing from LR into the JPEG is the proper corrective action. The drawback of re-reading the data from the file is your edit status is reset. You can open each image and stepback one step in the Develop history, where the new / refreshed data from the file is then in sync with the edit status. Not a big deal for one or two images, but not practical for 2000 images.

globetrekker Loc: Bend, OR

Words of wisdom. Thank you. I think I will quit while I am ahead. There is no real problem here. I can ignore the tiny icons and associated metadata messages.

Richard Engelmann Loc: Boulder, Colorado

I used to shoot RAW and JPEG so that I could scan through the JPEG images quickly to see which RAW images I wanted to process and keep. Then I wised up to the fact that on Windows 10 one can use "open with" the native Photos app to view the RAW images quickly. Now, I shoot only RAW, and I keep only the images I like after processing.

GrandmaG Loc: Flat Rock, MI

Very good advice...best answer!

Larryshuman

Beware of that price. I looked at a Arsenal 12TB external for $199.00. After I called the company I learned that the drive is a refurb unit NOT new. The question has to be asked why was it refurbed and what happened. Best practice is to never buy refurb or used drives.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Way back in the dawn of digital imaging, when I worked in the school portrait industry, we made millions and millions of portrait images per year. We did record medium quality JPEGs on cameras with larger-than-10MP sensors. Our largest print was a 10x13, with as little cropping as possible. So saving medium files made sense in the mid-2000s, because network bandwidth, PC processing speeds, and server space were VERY expensive then, compared to today. Raw? That was out of the question! Our Kodak DP2 lab software couldn't process any raw files other than their own. We used Canons...

Now, lest I remind my reader, the year is 2020.

Conventional hard drive space is reasonably inexpensive. SSDs are now in the pricing range of hard drives the same size of those, 5-10 years ago. I remember paying $700 for a 1TB desktop drive in 2002. The same money will buy a REALLY GOOD 18TB conventional drive today, or at least a 2TB SSD RAID array. A 1TB drive similar to the one I bought 18 years ago costs about $100 today, and that's for a really good one!

For my personal work, I have never found any particular sense in recording anything but the largest, finest quality files possible, whether recording raw or JPEGs. Medium and small limit your potential to crop or enlarge the image later.

You mention you photograph birds. It's highly likely you want to crop away useless background and foreground image, quite often. When that is the case, you should start with the largest possible file size your camera can produce.