Luminar AI Destroys Critical Metadata
Answered
During event photography, I use multiple cameras. I edit in Lightroom with Luminar AI as a plugin. I use the date and time metadata in the photos to keep event photos in a chronological order irrespective of the camera (and filename) I use to let the event make sense (date/time order). Luminar AI destroys the date/time metadata and renders this function useless. In Luminar 3 and 4 (I own both) I was able to retrieve the metadata after using the plugin, but Luminar AI completely destroys the metadata. This renders Luminar AI 100% unusable to me. Can this be fixed urgently?
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Just expanding on Darrl's point.
Not that I care anymore since I have already decided to quit using the apps all together and admit that I made a mistake purchasing them after all. However I do still follow this issue just in case something changes. Here is a quick recap, just in this post. I do not know if there is a duplicate report for this matter.
Riian reported it one year ago, his description was to the point, so after him, including me a total of 15 users reported the behaviour. When I posted I just wanted to let Skylum that there are more customers out there that they care about this issue and I guess that there are more that did not post at all in this thread.
Six people obviously from Skylum Kate Williams, Kirk Osborn, Elena O'Brien, Helena Carter, Agatha Winter, Anastasia Davis replied mostly with one liners "report this to the support"! Why can't they report it and reply to this thread with something meaningful, like we are aware of this issue and we are planning to address it?
Now as a last comment Luminar Neo is coming on February with many Luminar AI users already expressing their anger about the fact that they will need to pay again for this 'upgrade' / change and I wonder how many of us 15 here are willing to do so.
I know I won't.
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Thank you, Manolis, you are exactly on point and expressed this better than I could.
I am one of the suckers that paid for Luminar 6, or Neo as the marketers are calling it. When I get the software, I will open up one image that contains IPTC data, modify it and export it. If the data that I worked so hard to accumulate and enter into my file is still there, great. If Skylum's apathy toward this problem continues, which again I repeat, they are the only company in the industry that does this, then I will immediately request a refund and say goodbye to Luminar forever.
They are no longer the only company with sky replacement. Photoshop does it better and ON1 is improving all the time with a far larger and better collection of templates and skies. And of course, there is Landscape Pro which has been doing this for years. The only things Skylum and Luminar are unique at are stripping out our metadata and thinking that at some point, we would want to put a giraffe in our sky. -
... and I wonder how long it will take until this is fixed DESPITE the fact that this thread alone should be enough for a good quality assurance that is user centered. I don't think the problem can be located in the dev team, i think it is in the management.
The inability to respond to simple customer reported bugs with service in mind and the ongoing lack of transparency is a bit annoying.
Customer who report problems are not asking what excuse there might be, the are taking their valuable time to report a problem with a software they purchased and would like to use.
So to me the way Skylum reacted so far couldn't be worse from a quality based point of view.
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As far as I know, none of skylum products save metadata, if you edit a raw file directly in Luminar then save to a JPEG, that JPEG will be clear of any metadata, EXIF or IPTC, and this is really embarrassing since it's the basic functionality of any image editing program, all free image editing software I use save all the basic metadata with JPEGs, but not skylum's software. If this was a beta testing version I would understand, although even for a beta it wouldn't strange, since again it's the basic functionality, and I don't think it's very hard to implement programmatically either, bad, very bad Skylum.
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All Luminar versions have always destroyed IPTC data unless you are using Lightroom and follow their specific instructions instead of doing it the way every other plugin works. Neo is the first one that actually destroys EXIF data also. Losing IPTC data means I don't use their products as much as I would like to. Losing EXIF data means I can't use it at all. Depending on who is responding, you will get one of two answers:
1) We are not aware of this problem, please contact support
2) We are aware of this problem and we are working on it. Look for an update in a future release
The second response has been floating around through at least the last 3 releases. -
I have not yet had the opportunity to test the Neo version.
If the EXIF data disappears when exporting, this seems to me to be a major concern that the developers must solve very quickly, otherwise this version will never be used by somewhat demanding photographers.
As far as the loss of IPTC data is concerned, with software such as ACDSee, it can be copied from the original file to the exported file. This works, but it's a bit of a hodgepodge, unworthy of a program that claims to revolutionize image processing! -
I'm not one of the "Early Birds" but I look forward to reading the comments after February 17th...
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I fear it's more complicated than EXIF removal.
Using SYNOLOGY PHOTO, I tried to Edit the Time Stamp on the LUMINAR AI Export pictures and it's rejected.
It looks like the EXIF section is completely destroyed by the LUMINAR Export feature.
Any clue about it When this is going to be solved?
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Hi White Shirt!
If your version of Luminar Neo is the latest - Version 1.0.1 - and you still experience the EXIF data loss issues, could you please reach out to the support team via https://skylum.com/support, so that we could investigate your case?
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Just to say I have come across the same bug with Luminar AI and support eseentially said they had no real idea when it may be fixed. "You have encountered the known tendency, which our specialists investigate intensively to eliminate in the future. However, due to the circumstances in Ukraine, there is no information concerning the exact dates."
I can't test NEO as my trial has expired. I think I will be dropping Luminar AI as I need the jpg metadata far too much.
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Yes, I too have tested this long running issue with Neo and it still strips out some of the metadata, specifically keywords. My current workflow is that I call Luminar Neo (or AI) from Photo Mechanic. After exporting, some or all metadata is gone.
But, here is the worst part. If you use a Skylum product as a standalone, it does the same thing. So they can't blame other software or the process of the round trip. Skylum strips the data either when it loads the file or when it exports the file. Always has. Apparently, it always will and is the only software product on the market that does so. -
This is why I have abandoned Skylum and highly advise my partners, students and photography community to avoid the software as the workflow, especially when using multiple cameras covering a site where time in the metadata is critical is stripped out. Skylum support is useless in this regard as they deny the problem. I have even come to the point where I refuse to accept any student to any workshops who uses Skylum Software.
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I feel for all the people of Ukraine, but using that as an excuse is ridiculous. This has been a problem since at least Luminar 3 and they have either ignored it or claimed the problem didn't exist. They were never working on it before or after their country was invaded.
Unbelievable. -
Hello everyone,
I apologize for the inconvenience you encountered due to this bug. It should have been resolved in one of the previous Neo updates.
Justin How,
Can you please reach our team so we can extend your trial? We would also appreciate if you send us your original file and export settings you applied to your photo: https://skylum.com/support
We would also kindly ask you to contact our team via https://skylum.com/support , so we can collect as many information as possible about this problem. Look forward to hearing from you.
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Sorry, I went down that rabbit hole in Luminar 3, 4 and AI. It's something you can easily test for yourself. Enter Metadata, including keywords in any software of your choosing. Save that file. Open it in any version of Luminar, do an edit and then export the file. Open it back up in your library software. They keywords will always be gone, other data may or may not be.
Please post your results here for all to see. Thanks -
Helga Hufflepuff
I have already sumbitted my files to your support dvia dropbox and I got a confirmation email from support (Ivan) on the 27 June 2022 16:57. The answer was "You have encountered the known tendency, which our specialists investigate intensively to eliminate in the future. However, due to the circumstances in Ukraine, there is no information concerning the exact dates. " -
Helga Hufflepuff
So is there any update on a fix to this bug? -
Hello Darryl Brooks and Jeffrey Kogler,
Having checked this problem with our developers, I received a confirmation that this issue should be resolved now. Thus we would kindly ask you to send us the photos for testing for further investigation.
Here's how you can send us the file:
- Visit https://wetransfer.com/
- If it's your first time visiting this website, it might ask you to purchase a subscription. Simply select to proceed with the free version.
- Click Add your files.
- Select the file(s) on your computer.
- After you see all the files you need to send appear in the list, click the icon to the left of the Transfer button (the icon looks like a circle with three dots in it).
- In Send As select Link.
- Click Transfer.
- After the files have finished uploading, click Copy Link and paste it into your support request at https://skylum.com/support
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I also sent you a follow up message. Please, check your inbox.
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I have just replied to your email. I have just installed Neo 1.1.1 (9877) and then used "check for updates" to confirm latest version. I then checked whether this problem is fixed by editing a JPG photo. I can confirm the fault HAS NOT BEEN FIXED in this version.
I used the very well respected tool exiftool.exe (https://exiftool.org/) to export the metadata in files (JSON format) of both before and after images, and then used the comparison tool Beyond Compare to check for differences. There are actually quite a lot of differences but most crucially this clearly shows that all the XMP metadata is getting stripped out.
All this information and JPEG and JSON files are in the email I sent to you.
I does undermine my confidence in Skylum that the company appears to be incapable of fixing this issue even though many people have reported and assisted you in troubleshooting the bug.
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I think the problem is that the dev department does not get a (for them) useful description of the problem and/or the dev does not have an idea of the various meta data formats an image can have. And the management problem of not understanding how crucial this issue is and that fixing it can lead to improved sales thus giving a good ROI.
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From Skylum support (Kate) today:
"Please note that Luminar doesn't process IPTC / XMP Data, therefore, this data may not be completely preserved on export. However, Luminar did preserve the EXIF and GPS Coordinates for this photo.
At this time, there's no exact ETA for the introduction of IPTC/XMP support."
So there you have it - very dissapointing indeed. Shame as I like the product otherwise.
PS They did offer a refund to me. -
It is a shame. Any photo editor should not remove or corrupt metadata, it being a well established and quite universal component of digital photography. For the life of me I don't understand why the relevant data cannot just be left alone. I am not aware that any of the photo editors I have used do this to IPTC/XMP metadata; except that several years ago I became aware the the Makernotes in images applied by my Panasonic cameras was being corrupted by ACDSee. I still have image folders whose names contains words to the effect "DO NOT EDIT WITH ACDSEE".
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