Everyone has a different workflow. And your flow might include importing your images into Lightroom or Capture One before running them through Aftershoot.

That's completely fine, but you should take a couple of steps beforehand to ensure that your edits, Star Ratings, and Color Labels transfer seamlessly between the apps.

Let's say you have edited your images and want to import them in Aftershoot to cull them. Or you assigned Stars and Colors to already culled and edited images and want to use them to train your Personal AI Editing Profile.

To ensure that none of these changes are lost when you import them into Aftershoot you need to do the following:

Open Catalog Settings by clicking on the File/Lightroom Classic tab and make sure that the Automatically write changes into XMP box is checked.

Now either select all your images by hitting the CMD+A/CTRL+A shortcut or select the ones you need manually, and hit the CMD+S/CTRL+S shortcut to save the changes or edits you made to them.

Click on the Capture One/Edit tab and select Preferences. From there click on Preferences, select the Image tab from the menu, and choose the Full Sync option from the Auto Sync Sidecar XMP drop-down menu.

[screenshot with Capture One screen with the above description]

Now either select all your images by hitting the CMD+A/CTRL+A shortcut or select the ones you need manually, and hit the CMD+S/CTRL+S shortcut to save the changes or edits you made to them.

If you haven't culled your images yet, simply cull them in Aftershoot as you would normally and proceed to Step 3. Otherwise, continue reading this step.

In case you already culled your images in Aftershoot, open the culled album and click on the File tab, and select the Rewrite XMPs option from there. This will update your XMP files for these images.

Once done, export your images from Aftershoot and import them into Lightroom or Capture One.

Select all your images by hitting the CMD+A/CTR+A shortcut. Then click on the File/Lightroom Classic tab, select Metadata from the menu, and check the Read Metadata from File option. This will force Lightroom to fetch the Start and Color Ratings from the XMP files and you will see your imported images getting their color labels and star ratings automatically.

Select all your images by hitting the CMD+A/CTR+A shortcut. Then click on the Capture One/Edit tab, select Preferences, and click on the Image tab from the menu. Then toggle the Prefer Sidecar XMP over Embedded Metadata option. This will force Capture One to fetch the Start and Color Ratings from the XMP files and you will see your imported images getting their color labels and star ratings automatically.

That's all there is to it. Aftershoot is designed to have almost no impact on your workflow and seamlessly integrate into it.

If you have any questions or issues don't hesitate to get in touch with us or write a post on our Facebook Community - it's always our pleasure to assist you!