Why can't JPEG originals be exported with an XMP Sidecar?

But that data does not transfer with my JPEG. When I export the original + settings for any JPEG within Lightroom CC, it carries the tags, stars, flags, etc. but not the adjustments (light, color, etc.). Whereas when I export an RAF or DNG it imports with those adjustments.

When you export from LR, you create a new JPEG in this case, edits are “burned” into the new pixels and resulting exported JPEG.

That would be saving as a JPEG and would carry over destructive edits. I am trying to carry over the non-destructive edits.

Nope. You are still introducing errors into the data, there is no free lunch.

The JPEG has metadata edits if made within LR/ACR. Go ahead and apply some very radical visual edits on a JPEG in either product. Now find that JPEG and open it in Photoshop proper. You will see NO edits. Because they are metadata and exist inside that original JPEG header as text. All you did was edit instructions. You want to actually SEE the edits now outside of LR/ACR? You have to export a NEW JPEG (or TIFF whatever) and a new image is created from old (and metadata) and boom, there's the data loss. It absolutely isn't non destructive. 

The only 'true' non destructive editing is when you do the work from the raw and render a new, virgin set of pixels from that raw data plus your metadata instructions. 

Oh, some think layers are non destructive editing. Not really so either. Like the JPEG example above, at some point you must flatten the layers if you hope to see the image outside of Photoshop or print the darn thing. Then the edits are applied and it's not non destructive to the data. It may appear to be non destructive because you can always undo the edits from the layers but the same could be said of using 'save as' to apply edits and spin off an iteration without applying the edits to the original (hence the 'idea' of non destructive). But that isn't the case when one applies edits to any existing pixel data. There IS data loss. In high bit, it's moot; you can't see it. Here's why:

http://digitaldog.net/files/TheHighBitdepthDebate.pdf

I don’t want to view it outside LR. I want to be able to move the edits between LR Classic and LR CC, as I explained in the question.

Does not matter!

It does matter, because Adobe should be able to read it’s own metadata. If it can sync the edits between the two, there’s no reason they couldn’t write the software to allow for manual transfer of the edits between the two.

And Adobe can! It doesn’t matter as you have been repeatedly told.

It may not matter to you, but it does to me. I don’t want to make those edits twice.

It would matter if you understand the request you made and why it's utterly unnecessary nor why you'll see it implemented. Concentrate on the bug/user error not the need for sidecar files for non proprietary data files. 

The request I made was to export original JPEGS with the editing adjustments.

It does matter. I have middle school students that spent quite a lot of time working on files over the course of a trimester only to find that when their school accounts are disabled and they try to migrate their files to a new account of their own, that the edits will not make the migration since they shot jpegs.
Just because it doesn't matter to YOU doesn't mean it doesn't matter. Right?

Get your students to use the existing features, rather than wait (perhaps in vain) for a new feature to be developed. Immediately prior to the migration of their Jpeg files, if they select them all and do a Cmd+S (Mac) or Ctrl+S (Windows) all of the existing metadata (including edit info) will be written into the designated XMP section of the Jpeg file header (i.e. the equivalent of an XMP sidecar).

When I export an RAF or DNG from CC using the “Original + Settings” format, I can then import it to Lightroom Classic and all the adjustments (light, color, etc.) come with it. When I do the same for a JPEG, the stars and tags come with it, but the adjustments do not. If I were to export the JPEGs as JPEGs (instead of as original), then those adjustments would become destructive. The point, as I said in my post, is to move a file from Lightroom CC into Lightroom Classic, and not lose my non-destructive adjustments. At the moment, there appears to be no way to do that (without using sync between the two which is not supported, and was causing me to lose files, so is no longer an option for me).

It should work, and it does work for me. Make sure that you're working with a jpeg that has definitely been edited in LRCC (e.g. make an obvious change such as converting to B&W) then try again.

I'm not sure why you think syncing files between LRCC and LR Classic is not supported, as that's the obvious thing to do to get files in LRCC added to Classic.

When I first migrated to Lightroom CC (a couple months ago), Adobe had all these warnings saying that using both CC and Classic concurrently were not recommended and that errors could occur. When I first migrated, CC and Classic went into a syncing war, and dozens of my photos were lost with “sync errors” that could only be resolved by deleting and re-importing the original file, then re-adding each to all the relevant albums. It kept happening, and to avoid having to do that to hundreds of photos, and potentially losing all my work in organizing them, I turned sound off in Classic. Are you saying that this is no longer the case and that Adobe does support syncing back to my original Lightroom catalog? And if so, I don’t even know where to start.

When you say it works for you, are you talking about the changes syncing back, or have you tried exporting a JPEG from LRCC using “Original + Settings” and importing it into Classic and the adjustments to contrast, highlights, etc. get carried into Classic?

Okay, this is so strange. I just did a big export of JPEG originals from LRCC to Classic, and this time the adjustments did carry over... I guess I need to go back and try to find some of the JPEGs where they didn’t carry over, and figure out what was different abou those...

Just make sure that the files you select in LRCC have actually been edited in LRCC. That's about the only thing that might explain your initial findings, but as you've discovered it will work as expected when edits have definitely been applied before the export.

Yeah, so I went back to test this just to make sure it was not user error or maybe I just missed something. I just exported two separate JPEGS from LRCC using “Original + Settings.” Both were taken with the same camera (Fujifilm X-T2) in JPEG. Both were edited in LRCC before being exported and imported to LR Classic. One of them imports with the adjustments every time, the other does not, every time. The only difference I can think of is that one of the photos was imported directly into LRCC on my computer, the other was imported on my iPad Pro (so via Apple Photos first, then into LR Mobile), however, I just repeated that process with a new photo that I just imported in through LR Mobile and it transferred with the adjustments. I guess I found an actual bug here.

But the bottom line, bug or user error, there is NO reason for sidecar files for JPEGs or non proprietary formats.Consider what happens when sidecar files disappear, get corrupted, etc instead of having that data embedded into the original file format. It's not a feature. It's a way in which Adobe can (for mostly legal issues), avoid writing that metadata into proprietary raws. Other files, no problem. Proprietary raws are treated as 'read only' by Adobe. Other's may not. 

Sidecar, no sidecar, I don’t really care so long as the non-destructive edits come over to LR Classic or vice versa with my JPEGs.

Once you understand what non destructive editing really is, you'll see that sidecar files have absolutely nothing to do with anything you're asking about. 

"Camera makers proprietary RAW file format do not have that ability so LR and ACR store the edits in a XMP sidecar file."
.......................................................................

My raw nefs DO have that ability; it is just a 'political' decision on the part of Adobe only to use that ability for capture time edits. And even then they only put the new capture time into the xmp part of the raw file; they don't edit the actual capture time in the Exif part of the metadata. So you end up with two different capture times in your raw file. They made up the tale about raw files being 'untouchable'. Rubbish; Nikon software edits them, so do Photomechanic and Exiftool, and probably others I haven't tried. Adobe want everyone to use their Dng, so they disparage editing other types of raw files.

Bob Frost 

Bob is correct that Adobe doesn’t write to proprietary raws for “legal” (he preferred political) reasons. It isn’t a technical limitation.

I just commented on your previous thread. TL;DR, the develop adjustment levels are not showing up in some but not all exported images. I have not found a pattern to which it works for and which it does not yet.

As a test, I took one of the photos for which the develop settings were not transferring from LRCC to Classic, and made some changes in Classic and imported it the other way. The changes did transfer back to CC.

Okay, one more test, took an image where the develop settings were not transferring, and changed one setting (increased contrast from 0 to +1) in LRCC, and this time when exporting to Classic all the develop settings transferred with it.

In your tests,

1. Are you going to Develop in LR Classic to examine the photo there? 

2. Have you tried the workaround of exiting LR Classic, deleting the Previews.lrdata, and restarting LR Classic?

1. Yes, see video posted below.

2. I have not yet, will that affect the settings bars in the Develop Settings?

"2. I have not yet, will that affect the settings bars in the Develop Settings?"

Deleting the Previews.lrdata file is harmless and doesn't affect the contents of your catalog. The only effect is to cause LR to rebuild the previews it uses for displaying photos in Library (which could take a very long time depending on the size of your catalog).  So I am 99.9% confident that it won't affect the settings you see in Develop (it would be an extremely wierd-science bug if it did).

Okay, I confirmed that deleting the previews.lrdata file does not fix the issue.

I posted this as a separate, clean bug report so that Adobe will notice it:
https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/jpegs-saved-from-lr-cc-dont-import-correctly-...

The bug I've encountered appears to be different than the bug you encountered, as the settings do not show in Develop.

John, I'm not able to reproduce this issue on either my MacOS or Windows10 systems. In all cases the develop settings are correctly included in the exported jpeg, and seen in Library when importing them into Classic.

Jim, after iterating a bit with Rikk Flohr, I narrowed down the symptoms I observed to a confusing bug in the import option Build Previews: Embedded & Sidecar:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-importing-with-embedded-sidecar-pro...

If you followed my recipe using Build Previews: Standard, you wouldn't observe the bug.  

But John Anscher's problem is something different, as already discussed.

Okay, so I figured out what happened with the 2nd import. It apparently went into the Testing folder I made when I imported the 2nd photo. I probably should have deleted rather than just moving it, but this does show the develop settings not showing. I'll try deleting the previews.lrdata first, then re-test this again but delete the photo after the first import instead.

I ran another test where I did not use auto import, and I deleted the photos between. I replaced the video above, with that, so you can see it happening on my machine.

Here is one: http://jonanscher.com/resources/DSCF9619.JPG.

Great, I'll take a look at this in-depth in a couple of hours.

Thank you for taking the time to look into this. Let me know if I can provide any other testing or information.

"Here is one: http://jonanscher.com/resources/DSCF9619.JPG."

When you look at that photo as it currently exists in LR CC, are any of the setting sliders set at something other than 0?

Yep. Just like all the others near it.

I’m not near my computer at the moment, but these are from my iPad, the edits on that photo.

And again, if I make a single adjustment to that photo, then save it, it will import with all those adjustments. (I’m happy to start a fresh bug request by the way, now that I know this is a bug and not a feature issue.)

The problem with DSCF9619.JPG is that LR CC appears to have incorrectly saved it with this develop setting:

$ exiftool -G -xmp:alreadyapplied DSCF9619.JPG 
[XMP] Already Applied : True

The AlreadyApplied field is supposed to be True when all the develop settings recorded in the XMP metadata have already been applied to the underlying JPEG image. For example, when you export a JPEG from LR Classic, the underlying image will have all the develop settings "baked in", so the XMP metadata will include AlreadyApplied = True to indicate that.

But in this case, the settings clearly haven't been applied to the underlying photo. But LR Classic thinks that they are due to AlreadyApplied = True, so it ignores them. When I use the Exiftool utility to change the value to False and then import into LR Classic, the settings come in properly.

Do you remember the history of this photo?  The metadata indicates it was edited with LR Classic 7.5 as well as LR CC 1.5. I've tried unsuccessfully reproducing this bug both with migrating a Classic catalog and with importing directly into LR CC.

I think you should post a new bug report with the screenshots and the link to the saved file.  Also include screenshots of the Basic panel in Develop after you've imported the file into LR Classic, showing the sliders are all zero.   Or a video showing the sliders in CC, saving the photo, importing into Classic, and then Develop sliders in Classic. 

Unfortunately, I don't remember the exact history of that photo. Generally, since I migrated to LR CC I only edit them in LR Classic if they are merged panos or HDR. It's possible that when I grabbed the photo, I grabbed the version that was imported into Classic. I'll make sure I put a clean file when I repost this as a bug.

So you can not replicate this bug on all JPEGs?

LRCC:

Lightroom Classic version: 7.5 [ 1186149 ]License: Creative Cloud
Language setting: en-US
Operating system: Mac OS 10
Version: 10.13.6 [17G65]
Application architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 2.6 GHz
Built-in memory: 16,384.0 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom: 16,384.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom: 2,430.8 MB (14.8%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom: 4,888.3 MB
Memory cache size: 1,922.8MB
Internal Camera Raw revision: 1001
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 365MB / 8191MB (4%)
Camera Raw real memory: 366MB / 16384MB (2%)
Displays: 1) 2560x1440

Graphics Processor Info: 
Metal: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M

Lightroom CC version: 1.5 [ 20180807-1548-54800d7 ] (Aug  8 2018)Operating system: Mac OS 10
OS Version: 10.13 [6]
Application architecture: x64
Logical processor count: 8
Processor speed: 2.6 GHz
Built-in memory: 16,384.0 MB
Real memory available to Lightroom CC: 16,384.0 MB
Real memory used by Lightroom CC: 806.6 MB (4.9%)
Virtual memory used by Lightroom CC: 5,696.3 MB
Memory cache size: 3,829.8 MB
Internal Camera Raw revision: 1001
Maximum thread count used by Camera Raw: 5
Camera Raw SIMD optimization: SSE2,AVX,AVX2
Camera Raw virtual memory: 1933MB / 8191MB (23%)
Camera Raw real memory: 1934MB / 16384MB (11%)
Displays: 1) 2560x1440

Graphics Processor Info: 
Metal: NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M