PS comptibility on or off?

[danaltick]

Roger,

When you create masters and flattened derivatives in Photoshop, those files should automatically inherit the metadata from the original.  I must be missing something with your workflow.  Please explain.  Thanks.

Dan

[rogerhoward]

No problem.

1. Capture multiple RAW files; download to computer, converting to DNG
2. Ingest into Lightroom; apply group-level cataloging - keywords, titles, copyright - to each pano's image sequence
3. Export from LR to TIFF for stitching in PTGUI
4. Output layered PSD/PSD or flat TIFF from PTGUI - at this stage, the output file has *no* metadata derived from the originals; this file becomes my "master"; ditch the temporary files created in the previous step, but save the stitching project file (which has references to the source filenames, so I can easily restitch by outputting the DNGs to TIFFs again)
5. Copy metadata from first image in original sequence to master (using an exiftool-based script), so it inherits the cataloging already done in LR on the original DNGs
6. Open master in Photoshop and complete edits;

Now I have a full-rez TIFF (layered) which has all the cataloging from the original files - if I update the original DNGs with more keywording, it's a simple process to sync it to the master.

From there on out, all derivatives are made (generally in a completely automated way) from the master TIFF, so they do inherit the metadata on down the line. I think the part I didn't explain at first is that the stitching process I use does not preserve metadata from the files into its output.

[danaltick]

Roger,

Thanks for the explanation.  Given your pano requirements, it does sound like Tiff is the right choice.

Dan