The Road To Lightroom is Paved with PNG Files…
By kaylal on in 2012 Lightroom Supplies with 7 Comments
** For those of you who have read this blog for awhile – some of the information in this post may be repetitive. However, it is essential to understanding why you need to convert your PNG files to truly have the metadata stored inside them. This is so important because it means that no matter which organizing program you use, with keywords stored inside the photos, you can quickly organize all your files – in other words, converting PNG files means your organization system is not 100% reliant on your catalog. **
The biggest obstacle between where you are now and having your digital supplies organized in Lightroom is the PNG file format of many element files in most of your kits. Lightroom doesn’t want to play with them – it won’t even import them into your catalog because it refuses to recognize the PNG file format.
PNG stands for Portable Network Graphics format and unofficially the PNG acronym stands for “PNG Not Gif.” PNG was a file format created in 1995 when Unisys and CompuServe officially announced that programs using GIFs would require royalties because of Unisys’ patent on the LZW compression method used in GIF.
The best thing about PNG files for digital scrapbookers: they are small in size and preserve transparency – perfect for elements that are purchased and downloaded online. However, while you can categorize/keyword PNG files inside many organization software programs, it turns out that there is no standard metadata format for PNG.
Certain programs like Bridge may write to that file and pretend to have a closet to store the metadata, but if you open up that file in another program, or even save the file with no changes, the closet will be hidden and unrecognizable.
Basically, if you try to store metadata in PNG files, it is a safe bet you will eventually lose all your work. In my opinion, PNG stands for Preserves Nothing Good.
Remember Peter Krogh’s first rule of thumb when it comes to a digital software organization program – Get A Prenup! Whatever work you do to organize your supplies in a software program should be transferable to another program.
So what are we left to do? Convert those PNG files to something that will retain metadata. While the process is definitely a process, I can honestly say that if you want to get your money’s worth out of your digital supply stash, the time you invest in converting your files will come back with dividends.
THIS TIME when you organize your stash, all the keywords and information and metadata are going to stay with your files no matter WHERE you organize them in the future or how you save them (unless you try to re-save them to PNG format) and that is a VERY GOOD THING!
LASTLY: Before you do anything further in this class, make sure you have completed your FULL AND COMPLETE BACKUP of all your digital files!!
Holy Smokes Batman this is just what I was hoping you’d post. I’ve been sharing your up coming class and the idea in general of how to use Lightroom of organizing digiscrap supplies. This explains perfectly what’s going on. Hopefully the rush of folks coming to your blog won’t crash it!
I can’t wait for you next post in the organizing with Lightroom saga!
Take Care!
-c-
Thanks! Glad you found this helpful. I’ve been working on the class and realized I needed to do a better job explaining why I have chosen the path I have. As I have worked on the curriculum, I realized that the PNG thing doesn’t just apply to Lightroom, it applies to any software program you are organizing things with! So glad you found it helpful. I am hopeful I’ll find some time in the next week to share more in different software programs.
Kayla – When you save png files to tiff don’t you lose the transparency of png?
Nope – tif files can preserve transparency and layers
Sent from my iPhone
Oh my goodness… I am so happy to see this. I’ve been using Picasa for years to organize items, always tagging and categorizing all my digi supplies as new things come in so I can easily find them. When I recently moved everything to a new computer …whammo…. all those years of work disappeared. I thought it was Picasa’s fault. Thanks so much for the great tutorial on png’s without a closet. Great metaphor!
I never thought that moving to a new computer would do this, but you are so right – any slight change to a PNG file can separate it from metadata. Im sorry you lost your keywords, but glad you now understand why. Hope your future organizing efforts are more fruitful. All the best to you!
I am SO glad that I found your post, Kayla! I have been using PNG a lot lately because of the transparency plus, but had no idea of the metadata “closet” issue until today. I am an artist and graphic designer and I’ve been ‘trying’ to be better at putting metadata into all of my images since I’ve recently begun to post these online. When doing this today, I was creating metadata in my psd files and then saving it out to a png to post on my blog. I forgot something in my meta, and went into file info {in the PNG} to change it and found nothing there! That’s when I started searching for an answer. I now need to go back through all the PNG files for my website and blog and change what I can to gif or jpg. Can’t believe this.
Thanks so much! Great explanation and I now feel a little more intelligent about these file formats.
Cheers!