Lightroom Round-Trip

Get the colour labels and star ratings your client set while proofing onto the matching RAW files in Lightroom Classic — then publish the finished edits back over the proofs, keeping every rating, comment and colour label the gallery already collected.

This needs the PicPeak plugin for Lightroom Classic .

The workflow

1. Upload the unedited camera JPGs. Straight off the card, keeping the camera names (IMG_1234.JPG).
2. The client proofs. They mark colour labels and stars in the gallery. You can add your own marks in the admin photo view — those stay separate from the client’s.
3. Import the selections into Lightroom. Choose the event and the folder holding your RAWs, and bring in everything or only what was marked.
4. Edit and publish back. Rename the files however you like. The finished render replaces its proof in the gallery.

Step 2 is optional. Importing all photos is a first-class choice, not a fallback — the plugin is useful purely as a “get these RAWs into a collection” tool.

Before you start

Colour labels are off by default on new events, because a colour bar appearing unannounced mid-proofing would be a visible change to a live gallery. Turn them on per event in the feedback settings, or globally with event_default_allow_color_labels so new events inherit it.

PicPeak uses Lightroom’s own five colours — red, yellow, green, blue, purple — specifically so a client’s pick needs no remapping on the way into your catalog.

Importing selections

In Lightroom Classic: Library → Plug-in Extras → Import selections from PicPeak…

Photos already in your catalog are marked in place. Anything not yet imported is added, if you leave that option ticked.

Merging, not overwriting

Re-running an import, or importing onto photos you already triaged in Lightroom, must not silently destroy your work. Pick what happens when a photo already carries a different colour or rating:

Green ranks first because in a proofing workflow green means first choice — the pick that has to survive a disagreement. The same order breaks ties when several guests labelled one photo differently.

Every run reports how many conflicts it saw, so a lossy setting is never silent. A colour label PicPeak doesn’t know — one you defined yourself in Lightroom — is treated as lowest priority rather than discarded.

Publishing the edits back

Edit as usual and re-publish. The render replaces its proof: the photo keeps its ID, the client’s ratings and colour labels, its comments, and its position in the gallery. The share link stays valid.

Renaming is fine. During the import, the plugin stamps the PicPeak photo ID onto the catalog photo. That ID travels with the photo, so the filename is free to change — it is the ID, not the name, that carries the edit home.

If your gallery reads from a NAS or watched folder

Galleries backed by external media serve their photos straight from the share rather than from PicPeak’s own storage. When you publish an edit over one of those photos, the uploaded file becomes the one PicPeak serves, and that photo — only that photo — switches to PicPeak-managed storage.

Worth knowing, because it changes where the delivered file lives:

• Your original on the share is never touched. Nothing is moved, renamed or deleted there.
• The edited version lives in PicPeak’s storage, so it is covered by PicPeak’s backups rather than by whatever backs up your NAS.
• Re-scanning the folder will not re-import the original. The photo keeps its link to the source file, so a later scan recognises it as already imported instead of adding a duplicate alongside your edit.

Everything else is unchanged: same ID, same ratings and colour labels, same comments, same position, same share link.

Multi-camera shoots

Two bodies both produce IMG_1234.JPG, and PicPeak cannot tell them apart. Rename on ingest, before uploading, so the camera index becomes part of the number:

cam11234.jpg      ← camera 1, frame 1234
cam21234.jpg      ← camera 2, frame 1234

Matching reads the longest trailing run of digits, so 11234 and 21234 stay distinct where a bare 1234 would collide. A separator is not needed — swallowing the camera index into the number is what makes the run unique.

Keep the camera index single-digit (cam1–cam9). With a four-digit camera counter that gives a consistent five-digit run.

If you use the number fallback

Matching normally uses the full filename. There is an optional “Also match by trailing file number” setting for RAWs that were renamed before proofing, and a matching match_mode on uploads for renders whose RAW never went through the import.

If you rely on either, your delivery name has to keep the whole number:

Smith_Wedding_11234.jpg     ✅ keeps the full run
Smith_Wedding_1234.jpg      ❌ truncated — both cameras collide again

Files that do share a number are skipped and reported, never guessed at. A colour label on the wrong photo is worse than a missing one, because nothing about it looks wrong afterwards.

Exporting without the plugin

You don’t need Lightroom to get selections out. The admin photo view exports filtered selections as:

• XMP sidecars — xmp:Label and xmp:Rating per photo, read by Lightroom, Bridge and Capture One. Note that Lightroom only reads a standalone .xmp sidecar for RAW/DNG masters, and you have to trigger Metadata → Read Metadata from File yourself.
• CSV / JSON — every mark including the per-colour tallies.
• Plain text file lists — for Capture One and other tools.

Exports can carry either the client’s verdict or your own marks.

Troubleshooting

Nothing matched. Check that the RAW stems match the uploaded names — IMG_1234.CR3 matches a proof uploaded as IMG_1234.JPG. If the RAWs were renamed after upload, enable the number fallback.

“N local files share the number”. Two RAWs have the same trailing digits. Use the camera-prefix scheme above, or match on full filenames instead.

Labels didn’t change. The default conflict mode never overwrites an existing value. Switch to PicPeak wins or Highest priority wins.

Colours are missing entirely. Colour labels are probably disabled on that event — see Before you start.