Importing Lightroom catalog

Software darktable
1

Hi,

I used LR for several years, now I want to switch to Darktable. I read the blog post about the LR sidecar files that are read by Darktable. However, LR only creates the sidecar files for RAW files of camera manufactures. JPG files and also DNG files have no sidecar files, because all development data is written into the file. I have converted all my RAW files to DNGs, to save space and to benefit of the speed increase. I have only JPGs and DNGs. So my whole LR catalog has no sidecar files, as you can also see in the screenshot.

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I imported all my files with Darktable. The development data has been saved into my DNG and JPG files. But Darktable does not recognize any development settings.

Are DNG and JPG files not supported for importing development settings? What can I do to import my LR development data into Darktable?

Thank you.

2

Hello & welcome!

Unfortunately, so far as I can tell, lightroom refuses to write a sidecar file for DNGs.

However, if you’re willing to try it, you can dump the metadata from the DNG to an XMP file with exiftool:
exiftool -ext dng -xmp -b -w xmp [dir] where [dir] is the folder with the DNGs. I’d try this on a copy of part of your catalog, so that if things go badly, nothing is lost.

3

It works! Awesome! :slight_smile: Thank you!

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