Comments on: Writing XMP Files in Lightroom (why you shouldn’t and when you should)

By: Ali

Ali — Tue, 30 Mar 2021 23:42:28 +0000

In reply to Lon Lauber. Go to the top level folder and do a file search on your File Explorer (or Finder on Mac) for *.xmp and that should list all your XMPs, Then you can select them, and delete them.

By: Lon Lauber

Lon Lauber — Sun, 31 Jan 2021 05:20:16 +0000

If a person decides they don’t not want or need xmp files for their workflow is there an easy way to delete them all at one time? If so what are the steps? I’m using an iMac and it looks like I would need to go into every sub folder on my hard drive and then have to delete them sub folder by sub folder. I have more 102,000 xmp files now.
Thanks,
Lon

By: owen dawson

owen dawson — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 12:57:38 +0000

great article. thank you.
not sure why lightroom cc is creating the .xmp files when the box is unticked??

By: callmebob

callmebob — Thu, 07 Nov 2019 02:08:05 +0000

In reply to callmebob.

someone pinged me on my comment. the file the VC snapshot is written to is the BASE image filename… and to write that metadata, you move over to the base file and do a CTRL-S there… there’s not a separate file for the VC is the point, it’s data in and saved associated with the base filename.

By: Steve

Steve — Tue, 28 May 2019 18:53:39 +0000

If xmp files are not required (unless sharing), then why is there a LR warning when you uncheck this option warning that the file edits will not be visible in other programs (eg. Photoshop)? I always used to generate amp files, but have never used them. After many years, they have hogged up quite a large drive space.

By: Joey

Joey — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 06:45:50 +0000

In reply to Rob Sylvan. Genius! If only other people had brains and used them!

By: Joey

Joey — Tue, 01 Jan 2019 06:42:34 +0000

In reply to Rupert Witherow. Build a catalog for each separate shoot, or project, or whatever. Don't have to put everything in one, and your corruption catastrophe is a good reason not to! Also, you can backup catalogs. XMP is not the best answer.

By: Rob Sylvan

Rob Sylvan — Mon, 05 Nov 2018 13:28:55 +0000

In reply to Tanya. XMP files are tiny text files that hardly take up any space. You could spend a lot of time deleting them and maybe recover a few hundred MB of space. There are probably better ways to free up space than focusing on XMP files.

By: Tanya

Tanya — Sun, 04 Nov 2018 11:01:07 +0000

Thanks for this helpful post! Can I safely delete the old XMP files now that I’ve turned off this option in LR? I want to free up some space.

By: Rupert Witherow

Rupert Witherow — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 18:25:01 +0000

I had my catalog corrupt irrecoverably about 6 months ago, where NONE of my MANY backups would restore. There are many similar stories without resolution on the web – apparently a known issue. XMP was the ONLY thing that carried on working: 5k+ edits lost, 40k+ saved by XMP. I now check my XMP settings are on every time I start LR, and copy the sidecars across drives. Rebuilding the catalog is relatively trivial to my mind. I agree, time is very valuable indeed…