Android 8.1 / Pixel 2 XL populates caption field with techno data

Hi Stephen,

Could you send us the sample photos and also a screenshot of the Metadata panel in Lightroom for one of the files you send? Here is my email - keniya@adobe.com

Thanks,
Smit
Lightroom Classic CC Team

I downloaded a sample Pixel 2 XL from dpreview.com, and the authoritative ExifTool shows numerous warnings:

Warning = Tag ID 0x010f out of sequence in IFD0
Warning = [minor] Unrecognized MakerNotes
Warning = Tag ID 0x8827 out of sequence in ExifIFD

...and many more. This suggests that such photos may not conform to industry standards.  There have been at least a couple such bugs with Android reported here before.  

This particular sample photo loaded properly into my LR 7.1 without issue, though.  If you upload a sample problem pic to Dropbox and post the sharing link here, we non-Adobe users can also put the file under the microscope to see what might be going on.

Here's a link from a shot I took today. https://www.dropbox.com/s/oqt3kxbxau84ym5/20171214%20SF%20Federal%20Reserve.jpg?dl=0

The caption info shows as "Maker:0x4c,Date:2017-9-17,Ver:4,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar01,E-ve"

I took the photo with Google's camera app and transferred it to my machine with Dropbox and imported from there into Lightroom — same workflow as with earlier photos.

Screenshot: 

This is a problem with the JPEG and the software that created it, not with LR.  ExifTool shows the following:

$ exiftool -a -G 20171214\ SF\ Federal\ Reserve.jpg 
[ExifTool] Warning : [minor] Unrecognized MakerNotes
[EXIF] Image Description : Maker:0x4c,Date:2017-9-17,Ver:4,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar01,E-ve
[XMP] Description : Maker:0x4c,Date:2017-9-17,Ver:4,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar01,E-ve
[IPTC] Caption-Abstract : Maker:0x4c,Date:2017-9-17,Ver:4,Lens:Kan03,Act:Lar01,E-ve

Windows File Explorer and Mac Finder also show the same values.  All the the other metadata fields look normal.  

Those three fields, EXIF:ImageDescription, XMP:Description, and IPTC:Caption-Abstract, are precisely where the industry standard says the caption should be stored.  So rather than file looking corrupted, it appears that the camera software (or another app that touched the photo) has deliberately put those values into the caption fields.

You can simply clear these fields in batch in LR, or apply an import metadata preset that clears just the caption.