Metadata Import

Having finished scanning all my old film stock (all 31,913 images!!) I’m now looking to add all the relevant metadata to each. The preset function will be a huge help, but I will still have an enormous amount of keying that will be required for individual images. All my original metadata was logged on an excel spreadsheet and I have maintained the same file number on lightroom as originally used in the individual line cell reference in my spreadsheet. All the fields I require are already in NLP, but before I spend a significant amount of time rekeying the information I already have, I just wanted to check if there was any way of importing the data by mapping the individual fields in excel into the relevant field in NLP, either currently or in V3 when released. Reading through the guide I can’t see one, so I’m assuming it’s a no, but if there is one it will save me a great deal of work so wanted to check first.

Either way I’m really looking forward to seeing what you’ve done in V3.

Many thanks…

I don’t know of any NLP method but it’s fairly straightforward to embed the data into the image file using Applescript and the (discontinued but still working) Media Pro app. There are some existing Applescripts that might work or only need some easy hacking. I expect there are alternative similar methods that others here might know.

In my tests on Mac, I found that NLP’s metadata is only added to output files, if you export them with NLP’s export features. If you do that, you’ll have to write into the exported files and in several places at that:

You could try to add XMP sidecars that contain data in respective EXIF or IPTC fields and have LR import those before you convert the images. I’d not overwrite original metadata though.

For similar things I used excel like this

  • add a second sheet that has a format that can be understood by the recipient, when the sheet is exported as a text file (using an appropriate separator)
  • fill in the respective cells in sheet 2 by the content of sheet1

Many thanks to you both for your replies, I’m a Windows user rather than Mac but you’ve given me a few avenues to explore.

Thanks again.