metadata-presets-20130501.55.zip
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This plugin allows you to create and edit tagset presets for Lightroom's metadata viewer. That is, it allows you to pick and choose which metadata items Lightroom should show for each photo, and in what order they should be shown.
To be clear: this plugin does not allow you to edit photo metadata itself.
It merely allows you to edit the list of items to be displayed.
This plugin works in Lightroom 5, Lightroom 4, Lightroom 3, and Lightroom 2.
The same download works for both Windows and Mac. See the box to the upper right for the download link link (in orange) and installation instructions.
This plugin is an in-Lightroom version of the web-based preset editor that I published a couple of years ago. That application continues to work, but this plugin should prove to be more convenient. Also, this plugin incorporates the ability to include the custom metadata from other Lightroom plugins in your presets, a feature that I have not gotten around to update the online tool with.
This plugin is currently in beta release, without much documentation.
Mini Instructions
After installing it, you'll see a “Configure Metadata-View Presets” button in the Plugin Manager itself. Clicking on it will bring up the preset-edit dialog. Please see the “help” link in its upper-right corner.
Availability
I distribute this plugin as “donationware”. I provide it for free and it is mostly functional for the first six weeks. Until registered, it can not create “static custom presets”, nor import/export presets.
After the six-week trial period expires, custom presets remain usable, but with an ugly “unregistered” heading inserted at the top.
If registered, the “unregistered” heading goes away, of course, and also, the plugin gets the ability to create “static custom presets” that remain even if the plugin is removed, and it also gains the ability to import and export presets (so that you can move them from one computer to another, for example, or share with friends).
Registration is simple and costs the minimum 1 cent PayPal fee; any additional donation you'd like to make in encouragement or thanks is up to you. For details, see my blog post titled Lightroom Plugin Development: Now With Added Encouragement.
Version History
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Update Log via RSS
)
| 20130501.55 | Update for Lr5 |
| 20130412.54 | Build system update. |
| 20130328.53 | Fix for the registration system. |
| 20130209.52 | More build-system maintenance |
| 20130206.51 | Tweak for my registration system |
| 20130122.49 |
Note: you must restart Lightroom after installing this update. Added support for my Creative Commons plugin. Added support for Video and DNG metadata in Lr4. Added a bunch of other new metadata fields I noticed in Lr4. Updated the plugin's idea of Lightroom's builtin presets to match Lr4. |
| 20120617.48 | Add the ability to include custom metadata from any local plugin. |
| 20120608.47 | Fix an "attempt to perform arithmetic on field" error. |
| 20120526.46 |
Update to handle the Mac App Store version of Lightroom. Tweak for Lr4.1RC2. Enhanced the send-log dialog to hopefully make reports more meaningful to me, yielding, I hope, the ability to respond more sensibly to more reports. |
| 20120330.45 | Update to handle 4.1RC |
| 20120309.44 | Had broken registrations in Lr2; Update to the debug logging to better track down timing issues that might arise. |
| 20120304.43 |
More updates for Lr4. |
| 20120221.42 |
More updates for Lr4. |
| 20120207.41 |
More on the march toward Lr4, including upheaval in the code to handle Lightroom APIs being discontinued in Lr4. Added data for a bunch of plugins. Added some extra bulletproofing when reading preset files. |
| 20120127.40 |
There's a bug in Lightroom that causes the whole plugin to fail for some users. This failure happens when the "build a preset" dialog tries to pull up example image data saved by other plugins (e.g. an export plugin's "Uploaded to..." flag). This is just for the display of example image metadata while building a preset, and it'd be nice to show actual data, but not at the expense of crashing, so I've disabled it. The resulting preset, when used with Lightroom, of course does show all the data as appropriate to the preset you've built.... this bug is only related to how example metadata is shown in the builder dialog. Also, removed registration-related restrictions from the Lr4 beta, since you can't register in a beta. —Jeffrey |
| 20120114.39 | More tweaks for Lr4b |
| 20120112.38 |
Update for Lr4 beta: explain in the plugin manager that the plugin can't be registered in the beta. |
| 20111210.37 |
When doing a plugin upgrade, offer the ability to flush all the old copies of the plugin. Had issues with the registration button sometimes not showing. Added a system-clock check and reports to the user if the system clock is more than a minute out of date. An incorrect system clock can cause problems with various kinds of communication and authentication with some of my plugins, so I've just gone ahead and added this to every plugin. |
| 20110910.36 | Work around a bug that caused the plugin to crash in the Lr3.5 beta. |
| 20110207.35 | Was dorked in Lr2... now fixed. |
| 20110110.34 |
More debugging to try to crack this tough dialog-won't-open bug. The best I can figure at this point is that it's a bug in Lightroom. One workaround that just came to mind: before invoking the plugin manager, make sure that no photos are selected (e.g. that when in Loupe, "no photo selected" is shown, via control-D or command-D). That should, in theory, bypass the area of the dialog-creation code that's running into the bug. I can't reproduce the bug myself, so I can't test this workaround myself. |
| 20110107.33 | More debugging to try to crack this tough dialog-won't-open bug. |
| 20101219.32 | Added support for new IPTC in Lr3. Updated display for recent versions of my megapixel-sort plugin. Added yet more debugging to try to track down a missing-dialog problem some have been seeing. |
| 20101209.30 | Fixed an "ISO ISO" typo. Added a bunch of debug logging to try to track down a missing-dialog problem some have been seeing. |
| 20100829.29 | Made the revalidation process much simpler, doing away with the silly need for a revalidation file. |
| 20100820.28 | Discovered a bug in my plugin build system that caused horribly difficult-to-track-down errors in one plugin, so am pushing out rebuilt versions of all plugins just in case. |
| 20100712.27 |
Added support for my focal-lenth sort plugin. |
| 20100625.26 | Yikes, shaking out some more build issues. |
| 20100624.25 | Discovered a nasty build bug; pushing a new version in case it affects this plugin. |
| 20100609.24 |
This version can be registered in Lightroom 3. It can run in Lightroom 2 or Lightroom 3; it does not work in the Lr3 betas. It uses my new registration system when run on Lightroom 3, which avoids some of the silly issues of the old one. Please take care to note the details on the registration page: use of this version (or later) of the plugin in Lightroom 3 requires a new registration code, even if you had registered some older version of the plugin. |
| 20100525.23 | Turns out that "Metadata Date" is not available to the Lr3 beta, so the plugin wasn't working there. Made it always empty in the Lr3 beta preset-building screen. |
| 20100520.22 | Fixed the data used for the "Metadata Date" sample data in the preset-building dialog... I'd been showing the last-edit date by mistake. |
| 20100516.21 | Update for the Lr3 beta. |
| 20100315.20 |
Completely changed how the one-click upgrade applies the newly-downloaded zip file, in the hopes that it'll work for more people. Rather than unzipping over the old copy, it now unzips to a temporary folder, then moves the old folder out of the way and the new folder into place. Prior versions' folders are now maintained (with the version number in the folder) in case you want to revert a version; you may want to clear them out from time to time. Of course, it won't take affect until you try to upgrade after having upgraded to or beyond this version. |
| 20091205.19 | Minor internal debugging tweaks. |
| 20091027.18 | Minor UI tidyup for OSX. |
| 20091027.17 | More LR3b fixes... actually seems to work now. |
| 20091022.16 | Added a first draft of some rudimentary support for Lightroom 3 Beta. See this important note about plugin support in Lightroom 3 Beta and Lightroom 3, including future plans for features and my registration system. |
| 20090714.15 |
Enhanced the one-click upgrade stuff quite a bit, now detecting ahead of time when it will fail because the plugin is installed where Lightroom can't write (if Lightroom can't write to it, it can't update itself). I also added a progress bar, and now download in smaller chunks to avoid 'out of memory' errors on the larger plugins. Do remember that this new functionality becomes available after you upgrade to or past this version, when you then upgrade with it. |
| 20090626.14 | Added another new Video-Asset Management plugin field. |
| 20090624.13 | Added fields in support of my new Video-Asset Management plugin. |
| 20090617.12 | Added the new upload date/time fields for my other upload plugins (Zenfolio/SmugMug/Facebook/PicasaWeb). |
| 20090603.11 | Added support for the new "Flickr Upload Date" and "Upload Time" fields that I just added to my Flickr plugin. |
| 20090601.10 | Seems some Mac users were still losing presets each time... thought I tamed that bug, but indeed found another bug and fixed it. Hope this is the last one. |
| 20090521.9 | Fixed a "loadstring" error some users got. |
| 20090511.8 |
This update affects Mac users only It seems that many (all?) Mac users had problems with Lightroom forgetting presets each time it restarted. I've discovered a bug in Lightroom that I think I've been able to work around in this version, but the change is not backward compatible, so Mac users who were actually able to make Custom User Presets will lose them upon upgrade. Sorry. This happens only when upgrading from before this version to this version or after, and subsequent upgrades should be lossfree. (Static User Presets, and all presets on Windows, are unaffected and should carry through unharmed.) |
| 20090510.7 | Added a link in the Plugin Manager to the plugin's update-log RSS feed. |
| 20090428.6 | Added custom metadata from my Megapixel Sort plugin. |
| 20090426.5 | Added a bunch of debugging stuff to try to track down why presets are not saved for a few users. |
| 20090425.4 | Oops, the one-button upgrade stuff didn't work due to a typo on my part, sorry. Upgrading to this version will still need to be manual, but upgrading from this version to whatever's next will hopefully work. |
| 20090423.3 | Fixed "ID_PREFIX" bug that popped up when converting a custom prefix to static. |
| 20090420.2 |
Wow, this plugin continues to be one of the most complex I've ever worked on. Tons of new stuff this time, including...
One of the big todos is to add the ability to set attributes to items, such as the the number of lines of a caption. |
| 20090330.1 |
Initial public beta release. The UI for this plugin has been by far the most difficult to do, and that's mostly what this plugin is about: a snazzy interface for editing a simple preset file. Lightroom's plugin infrastructure is still in its infancy and understandably Adobe has not yet filled out every feature required to make a rich, interactive presentation. Taking it almost as a personal challenge, I've expended enormous effort to try to work around some of the limitations. This is the best I can do for now. At this first-beta-release stage, I'd appreciate comments via email, so I've turned off comment-submission for this post. Because this is an early beta that I don't want to hang around very long, the plugin expires after a month. It'll certainly be updated well before then. |
Hi Jeffrey,
I really like your plugins! I’ve registered 3 just now. I was wondering if it was possible to get your Metadata Preset Editor plugin to “work” with Mr. Rob Cole’s “Custom Metadata plugin”. I can get your plugin to “see” his, but I can’t edit which one(s) I want to show up in LR3′s panel. Or maybe I’m just doing it wrong? Advice please.
Sincerely,
Ray
I’m not familiar with that plugin, but I have instructions on my plugin page for developers of other plugins wishing to have their other plugins supported by the metadata-viewer preset, so have him contact me with the requisite info. (update: I’ve heard from him.) About a “custom metadata” plugin, I’d be curious to see how he did it. I developed a spectacularly useful custom-metadata plugin in the spring of 2009, but at the end realized a fatal flaw that prohibited it from being used with multiple catalogs, and with prospect of catalog corruption too great, I shelved it. Adobe almost got the fixes into Lr3, but not quite, so it remains on the shelf. )-: —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey,
Thanks for the quick reply. I have already contact Rob Cole, the writer of the plugin and following your note in your plugin he has emailed you the info you’ve requested (I got the cc from him). Hope everything works out for all of us. Thanks again for the awesome plugins.
Ray
Hi Jeffrey
Thank you for this update. I used the earlier version with LR2 and I’ve just go around to finding out how to do it in LR3.
I love the “everything is done via this button” button! It saves a lot of time
In the UK
Patrick Cunningham
Jeffrey
Could you add Paul Kamphuis’s Lightroom uploader Plugin?
Thanks
Patrick
There are instructions there for plugin authors wishing their plugins to be represented here…. ask Paul to send me what I need to include his stuff here. —Jeffrey
I’ve just got to say this: I’m working right now with your LR Flickr plug-in and have just downloaded this as well. You deserve every penny you get and more! My husband and I would not know what to do without your plugins, and instead of asking you any questions, I’m just saying: THANK YOU BIG BIG! We will be making payment by tomorrow for the plugins we are using and I encourage others to think about giving you a little bit more than they originally thought they would, thinking about the added value these plugins give their lives and routines. Where would they be without them…? Assign a value to that!!!
Hi Jeffrey,
I tryed your plug in and I find ir really great.
I would be happy to see the “modified date” in the metadata viewer and it seems currently impossible. Modifed date is seen from lightroom as it is possible to rank order “time of change” but i never find a way to see it without having to open explorer.
May be a suggestion for next update of the plug in would be to see “modified date” or modified date and time” in metadata field ?
best regards,
Thibaud
from France
Hi Jeffrey,
I have a problem with Nikon AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f2.8G IF-ED and D90.
At reproduction ratio 1:1, Nikon manual says 314 mm and the pluggin displays 349,99 mm.
best regards,
Jean-Luc from France.
The plugin just reports the metadata, which originates in the lens/camera. It’s not at all exact… I would guess that if you put the camera on rapid fire and slowly change the focus from one extreme to the other, and then inspect the subject-distance metadata for all the photos, you’ll find that there is a small set of lengths … maybe a dozen.. that everything is reported at. The same goes for a zoom and the focal lengths. Give it a try and report back with your findings…. —Jeffrey
Can I create custom metadata fields with this plug-in?
I added a field labeled “label” and then changed the label to be “My label” but that didn’t carry over into Light Room. It was labeled “label” in Light Room.
Thanks for any info. I’m trying to add custom metadata fields.
Drew,
Upland, CA
No, sorry. I don’t understand what “added a field” means, but this plugin lets you strip selected metadata, not add any. BTW, the Adobe product is “Lightroom”, not “Light Room”. —Jeffrey
I just registered MetaData Preset Builder and Metadata Data Viewer. My primary goal was to be able to see Flash settings both on and off Camera. I was pleased to find this information in the Data Viewer, but their is so much information there I was hoping by registering Preset Builder I could build a customized preset that contained this as well as other EXIF data already in LightRoom 3. I’m probably missing something but all I see when I select All Possible items or any other starting point are those settings already in Lightroom, not the additional Flash related ones I find in Data Viewer. I don’t think Preset Builder is much help to me if it doesn’t include Data Viewer elements. My only reason for adding it was to simplify workflow. It takes Data Viewer a few seconds to load for each photo, my goal is to compare two photos in Lightroom Survey mode and click back and forth the see the camera settings.
Hope that makes sense, can you tell me what I’m missing?
You’re not missing anything… what you want to do makes total sense… except that (for whatever reason) Lightroom doesn’t allow it. The preset builder works within the confines of what data Lightroom has made available to plugins in the metadata panel, while the Data Viewer jumps out of Lightroom to use ExifTool to grab all the data from an image, then sends it back to the dialog for presentation. As you’ve noted, it’s a slow round trip. Why doesn’t Adobe make all the data available to the plugin? I don’t know, but I suppose like everything else it’s part of the ongoing tug of war between resources (or lack thereof) like time/money/engineers and the never-ending tsunami of feature requests. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffery,
I apologize if this has been addressed already, this is in regards to the Original File Name. In your wonderful plugin, I can see the original file name, but is there anyway to embed that into the metadata when you export the file? Is there another plugin of yours that will do this?
In my photo library system I have, I rename all the files, but would like to keep the original file name in the metadata in case I need to go back to the original RAW file.
Thank you!
-Stephanie
Houston, TX
Nothing easy comes to mind, mostly because it sounds like you’re using Lightroom in a nonstandard way. Normally, the only files in your library *are* the original raw files, but it sounds like you’re exporting versions of the raw files, then reimporting those derivatives. You need to do this for copies that you’ve edited externally (e.g. in Photoshop), but otherwise one generally works with their raw files directly. The best I can suggest is that you use exiftool to copy the original filename into a metadata field that Lightroom does handle natively (e.g. caption, job id, …) and then “metadata > read from file”. (But be sure to do a “metadata > save to file” before, so that when you read back in later, you’re getting all the changes you’d already made in Lightroom along with the new original name copied to the new field.) —Jeffrey
I think I have a pretty good idea of what this does, but would love to see the ability to analyze my development pre-sets and have them tell me the difference between the two or taking an original and a virtual copy and telling the differences or what was adjusted.
This plugin is unrelated to develop presets. —Jeffrey
Could I suggest a little, helpful enhancement ?
I find it would be great to have an “EV” parameter – exposure value (computed from exposure time and aperture, adjusted for ISO sensitivity as well), the same as in your Data Plot plugin.
It would greatly improve understanding on situations where light conditions are the same, but I change exposure parameters (or auto program does that for me) and want to know when camera build light meter has failed.
Thank you for great job!
Sadly, Lightroom doesn’t offer that as a bit of data that can be displayed, so in the Metadata Panel we’re out of luck for this idea. —Jeffrey
I use your other plugins and they’re great. I’m evaluating this one but I have a question. The concept is great, but the number of fields I have to choose from (seemingly) are very limited. Does this change once I register it or am I missing something now? The ones I’m seeing are very basic but I see no scroll bars or another way to see others. I’m near Atlanta, GA by the way
Thanks,
John
There should be a scrollbar to the left of the list (more or less in the middle of the dialog). The list has 150 or so entries, and is limited by what Lightroom supports. —Jeffrey
Hi Jeffrey
I find your plugins extremely helpful.
I have a question re the Metadata Preset Builder. Will this plug-in (or another of yours) allow me to change the default choices within a field. Specifically, in the Copyright Status field, I am trying to add choices to the 3 default choices; is this possible?
Thanks in advance.
– Luis
Sadly, Lightroom doesn’t allow for that, sorry. —Jeffrey
Jeffrey, is it possible to force LR to load a metadata list (created with this plug-in) other than “Lightroom – Default” on startup? I can not see an obvious way in LR3, how about LR4?
Thanks, Richard, (Victoria, BC)
Whatever list you choose should be remembered across invocations of Lightroom, though I recall a bug early in Lr4 that caused it to reset to “default”, that shouldn’t impact your use with Lr3. It could be because your Lightroom preferences file has gone corrupt… when that happens, random settings start reverting to defaults. —Jeffrey
Jeffrey’s latest version supports metadata from all my plugins so far, including ExifMeta (and CustomMetadata). – thanks Jeffrey!
Hi Jeffrey,
Just upgraded my LR 4.1 to 4.2. Plugin is also active, but it seems my custom presets are lost. Should these be automatically converted/upgraded, or can I move them over from an older version ??
Johan
I would have thought they’d not be affected by the upgrade, but if they seem to have been, yes, just move them over yourself…. —Jeffrey
Next time around for this plugin to be updated, could you add Lightroom’s video fields? (duration, Frame Rate, Audio Rate, etc). I see that it supports your Video Asset Management plugin (which I had but later removed once LR3 came out) but there doesn’t seem to be any access to the native fields.
This plugin did indeed need some love… I’ve now updated a bunch of things for Lr4. —Jeffrey
Hi Again Jeffrey.
Lightroom 4.3, Windows 7 64 bit, Metadata-Viewer Preset Editor 20130209.52
I’m continuing to refine my custom metadata panel with your plugin and I’ve come across a small problem. In the list of available metadata fields in your plugin there’s one called “Image GUID” in the IPTC Extensions section. I can select that field and include it in my preset in the plugin, but when I reload the plugin and select my preset Lightroom does not display the Image GUID field. I’ve tried moving the field up and down but whereever I place it Lightroom does not display it. It also doesn’t appear in the “All Possible Items” built in preset when that is selcted in Lightroom either.
Hope it’s a problem you are able to fix within the plugin.
All the best
Roger
For reasons I’m not privy to, that field is read-only within Lightroom, so it’ll show up only for images that already have it. You have to add it outside of Lightroom before import, or before syncing metadata from the file into Lightroom. If the image doesn’t already have it, the row does not appear. —Jeffrey
>> For reasons I’m not privy to, that field is read-only within Lightroom, so it’ll
>> show up only for images that already have it. You have to add it outside of
>> Lightroom before import, or before syncing metadata from the file into
>> Lightroom. If the image doesn’t already have it, the row does not appear. —Jeffrey
Thanks for the explanation Jeffrey, your reply motivated me to “get down and dirty” with exiftool and I’ve successfully add a GUID value to a canon RAW file and it does indeed show up in Lightroom after import.
Now I just have to decide if modifying original raw files is something I actually want to do
Thanks again – Roger
Yeah, it sucks that it’s this way… it makes no sense to me. I also modify my raw files before import, to set the lens data for shots taken with a non-CPU lens. Just silly that they go out of their way to make these fields readonly. It took about five years, but I was happy to at least find writable geolocation fields in Lr4. —Jeffrey
Hi. I have used your plugins for several years, but now my Windows has failed, and I am manually transfering all my data to a new computer. Is there a way to find my presets on the old computers hard drive? It is not possible to start Lightroom on the old computer…
I am very pleased with your plugins, and if you have a solution for me on this problem I will definitely re-register with a noticeable donation
Look at the docs for the Lr/Backup plugin for places where Lightroom stores stuff. (I highly recommend this plugin to help with exactly these kinds of situations.) Many plugin settings are stored in your Lightroom Preferences file. —Jeffrey