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Lost changes to DNG when opening in Photoshop CS3

Dec 8, 2008 3:06 PM

I am losing changes that have been made to DNG files when opening these files in Photoshop CS3. I added my Canon CR2 RAW files to Lightroom, made changes to the images in Lightroom (exposure, contrast, color correction, etc) and then exported the images as DNG files. Now, when I open any of these DNG files in Photoshop CS3 or Lightroom 2.1 all of the changes are completely lost. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this?
2701 Views   12 Replies   Latest reply: (jbfoto), Dec 21, 2008 10:19 PM
 
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  • Ramón G Castañeda
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    1. Ramón G Castañeda,
    Dec 8, 2008 3:53 PM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    You're not telling Lightroom to write the adjustments to metadata, so Lightroom is keeping them in its database only. Ask in the Lightroom forum how to set that application to write the adjustments to the DNG file.
     
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    2. (jbfoto),
    Dec 8, 2008 4:19 PM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    If I look at the DNG files that have been exported from Lightroom in Photo Mechanic they look correct. The preview of the DNG is retaining the changes I made in Lighroom and showing up correctly in Photo Mechanic. This would leave me to believe that the changes made in Lightroom have been applied to the DNG file and that when this file is opened in Photoshop's ACR it will look the same.

    So you what you are telling me is that even though Lightroom is exporting a DNG preview of the changes that were being made to the file, it does not actually retain the changes in a way that Photoshop can use them?

    Since most of these DNG files were exported in Lightroom 1.1 it would be difficult for me to determine what my Metadata Settings were at the time, although I have had this problem with Lightroom 2.1 as well.
     
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  • Ramón G Castañeda
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    3. Ramón G Castañeda,
    Dec 9, 2008 12:31 AM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    >So you what you are telling me is that even though Lightroom

    I am absolutely saying no such thing . My response was based entirely on advice given to others by others more knowledgeable in LR than I, advice which has always been followed by the even stronger advice to consult with the Lightroom forum.

    Yours is not the first report about not being able to see the edits in ACR. For some reason I seem to remember that it's mostly Windows users rather than Mac users who have the problem.

    >does not actually retain the changes in a way that Photoshop can use them?

    You mean ACR. Photoshop and Bridge cannot open raw or DNG files, only ACR can, hosted by either Photoshop or Bridge.

    Check with the ACR forum and with the Lightroom forum in any event.
     
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  • Ramón G Castañeda
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    4. Ramón G Castañeda,
    Dec 9, 2008 12:32 AM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    Incidentally, did you update your ACR plug-in to ACR 4.6?
     
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  • MethodPhoto
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    5. MethodPhoto,
    Dec 9, 2008 3:44 AM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    Select the file and press Ctrl/Cmd S to save the metadata edits to the DNG in Lightroom.
     
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    6. (jbfoto),
    Dec 9, 2008 8:43 AM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    Thank you for your replies to this problem. Yes, I did in fact upgrade to ACR 4.6 on 10/07. The problem that I have it that only a few of the thousands of images I worked on remain in Lightroom at this point. I worked on the files in Lightroom, exported them as DNG files to retain the changes and then removed them from Lightroom.

    I have narrowed the problem down to a specific date of 10/21. I noticed that all of the DNG files that I am having problems with were modified on this date and will not open in ACR while retaining the changes I made in Lightroom. If I go through my backup and pull the same DNG file prior to 10/21, it opens in ACR perfectly and retains all of my Lightroom modifications.

    What I want to determine here is two things. One, how to recover the Lightroom information in the DNG files that have been corrupted so the file opens in ACR as intended. Two, how to prevent this from ever happening again. I am happy to post samples of the problematic DNG files, as well as, the older backup versions that are working correctly. Any insight to this issue would be greatly appreciated.
     
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  • Thomas Knoll
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    7. Thomas Knoll,
    Dec 9, 2008 12:27 PM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    Yes, please post a problematic DNG.
     
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    8. (jbfoto),
    Dec 20, 2008 3:01 PM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    Thomas, thank you for looking into this issue. I have placed the problematic DNG files, as well, as the original Camera RAW and properly working DNG files on my server. The zip archive contains a readme file containing additional information about the files.

    http://justinbastien.com/downloads/public/DNG_Test_Files_20081208.zip
    (52.5 MB)
     
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  • Thomas Knoll
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    9. Thomas Knoll,
    Dec 20, 2008 8:00 PM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    I looked at one of the problematic DNG files you posted. It looks like some non-Adobe software was the last software to write to these DNG files, since it contains a combination of tags that Adobe never writes.

    Did you use some non-Adobe software to add metadata to the DNG file? Photo Mechanic perhaps (there are some signs of that in the embedded XMP)?

    Edit: Reading back through your message it appears you are a Photo Mechanic user. It appears that Photo Mechanic wrote its metadata into the DNG file after you exported it from Lightroom. The metadata that Photo Mechanic wrote did not include the conversion settings, so they were deleted in the process.
     
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    10. (jbfoto),
    Dec 20, 2008 11:27 PM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    Thomas, that is great news you determined what the problem was. Yes, I was in fact using Photo Mechanic in my workflow. Generally, I use it at the beginning of my workflow before I bring the photos into Lightroom. In this case, I updated the metadata in the DNG files after processing them in Lightroom.

    What specifically do I need to watch out for in terms of adding or modifying metadata to DNG files in the future to prevent this from happening?
     
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  • Thomas Knoll
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    11. Thomas Knoll,
    Dec 21, 2008 5:44 AM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    I don't know. (I don't even have Photo Mechanic installed). My suggestion would be to do some experiments with copies of files. Export a DNG from Lightroom and then try doing stuff to it with Photo Mechanic and see if you can reproduce the problem. If you can, please come back and post steps. Also, please report the issue to the makers of Photo Mechanic.
     
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    12. (jbfoto),
    Dec 21, 2008 10:19 PM   in reply to (jbfoto)
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    I looked into the metadata issue with Photo Mechanic and found my answer in the help menu under index > IPTC/XMP Preferences. There is an excellent explanation in there on how the various metadata formats work and how they should be configured in Photo Mechanic. It turns out that my metadata settings had been modified while I was doing some testing. I never set my metadata settings back to the default settings after the testing and this is what caused the problem. I tested everything with Photo Mechanic's default metadata settings and everything is working great now. Next, I have to see if any of the metadata for the problematic images is recoverable in any way so I don't lose all of the work I did on the images in Lightroom.

    Thanks so much for your help!
     
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