Metadata entries get lost in Lightroom after reimporting changed pictures

[Aemetz59]

Hello everyone,

the last days I tried to find an understandable description of the fields "Title", "Description" and "Label". The - German - Lightroom designation of the IPTC fields differs from the official one. Here I couldn't find anything unambiguous.
Furthermore I exported photos with metadata of these three fields from Lightroom, opened them with the Software Geosetter, changed the data in These three fields, renamed the photos and imported these photos - with the changed metadata - back into Lightroom.

I noticed the following:

1. The metadata field "Caption" does not appear in Geosetter. Also another IPTC-based program does not display the content of this field. Is this a special field that only exists in Lightroom?
2. After reimporting to Lightroom, the content of the metadata field "Title" has disappeared

Does anyone in the community have a conclusive explanation, link, or workflow for me?
Unfortunately, there are no detailed descriptions on the internet, and my (German) Lightroom compendium (Author Maike Jarsetz) does not contain any information about this either.

Thank you in advance for your support

Nachricht geändert durch Thomas Poller: English translation

[johnrellis · Accepted solution]

Every program and industry standard uses different names, and multiple fields in LR get mapped to multiple industry-standard fields -- it's very confusing. Here's a table that shows how the fields in LR's Metadata panel maps to industry-standard fields:

LR Metadata Panel (English / German)	Industry Standard Metadata Fields
Default > Title / Standard > Titel IPTC > Title / IPTC > Titel	XMP:Title IPTC:ObjectName
Default > Caption / Standard > Bildunterschrift IPTC > Description / IPTC > Beschreibung	EXIF:ImageDescription XMP:Description IPTC:Caption-Abstract
Default > Label / Standard > Beschriftung	XMP:Label

I've never seen this documented anywhere. I reverse-engineer the mapping by entering unique values into the Metadata panel, doing Metadata > Save Metadata To File, and then using the free utility ExifTool to see in which metadata fields in the file those values got stored.  You can apply the same method to the other programs you're using to determine the mapping from that program's user interface to the industry-standard fields.

[Aemetz59]

Dear Johnrellis,

thanks a lot for your quick reply.

I fully agree with your answer, as I took the opportunity this evening to do a cross-check quite the same way you did.

I opened a picture using GeoSetter to check the field values, and I found same relations the same way you did.

The Title and Caption are Standard IPTC fields, whereas the Label or , in German translation, the "Beschriftung" field in Lightroom is a separate field. This confuses me and maybe a lot of other users as well.

I also made a mistake when reimporting pictures with modified Metadata into Lightroom, so I had to change the Import parameters.

The Title and Caption fields are now correct after reimporting them into Lightroom following a modification with any other tool like ExifTool, GeoSetter or similar.

It remains me to say that Lightroom documentation is really poor with regard to this subject.

Again, thanks for your clarification!