Where does LR store edits of TIFs?

[DanK]

I just posted this in another online forum, but perhaps someone here knows.

I have had LR set to automatically write changes into XMP for many years.

Recently I stacked the image below in Zerene, edited it in LR, then moved it to photoshop to edit it further. I then brought it back into LR as a TIF. (I posted an earlier version of this here a few weeks ago.)

The image had a lot of white spots caused by imperfections in the petals, and yesterday I went back to it in LR and did a LOT of spot removal. I then exported the resulting image, which is what is posted below.

When I then went to back up the relevant directory, I found that NEITHER the XMP file nor the TIF file had been altered. They still had a two-week-old date stamp.

The edits are clearly stored because the exported JPEG shows them. However, it seems to me that the only place these could be stored is in the catalog, even though I have LR set to store edits in sidecar files.

Anyone know what's going on?

Thanks.

[davidedric]

Don't know for sure, but I believe that Lightroom always stores edits in the Catalogue, and that the xmp writing is additional. History steps​ are not stored in the xmp files, so if you can see them they are coming from the Catalogue.

[Manfred M]

Dan - now that Adobe Camera Raw and Lightroom Develop Module have identical user interfaces and ACR does not have a catalog, it would be interesting to see what ACR does. The only place that it can store is in the xmp file.

[DanK]

Hmm. I did a little more investigating. It definitely doesn't store the edits in the TIF file itself. I opened the TIF file directly using Irfanview, and the edits were definitely not there. None of them were. The image was still in color.

I then realized that there are is no xmp file for either of the TIFs in that directory that were brought back from photoshop. That suggests that Lightroom doesn't store edits of TIFs in XMP files.

That suggests that they are in the catalog, but that doesn't answer where ACR would put them.

To test this, I copied the TIF into a new folder, renamed it, did a few of the same edits, and saved it. ACR within Photoshop saves the edits to the TIF file.

EDIT: I think I found the issue. The image in question was created from a virtual copy. LR does not let you store the metadata into the file if there is a virtual copy in the workflow.

[Manfred M]

EDIT: I think I found the issue. The image in question was created from a virtual copy. LR does not let you store the metadata into the file if there is a virtual copy in the workflow.

That makes sense as the xmp sidecar file is based on a one-to-one relationship between the two. In a database (i.e. catalog), that can be designed to operate more flexibly and offers the option of storing different edits for the same file. That is effectively what a virtual copy edit is all about.