A little while back Jared Platt got in touch about using MetaMagic in his metadata class at this year's Lightroom Summit. I'll be honest, that was a good day. Jared's been teaching Lightroom to working photographers for a long time and his stuff is the opposite of fluff — so having him want to show the plugin to his audience meant a lot.
The Summit runs June 1 to 5, all online, with a big lineup of instructors covering pretty much every corner of Lightroom. Jared's metadata class airs Thursday June 4 at 10 AM EST, and MetaMagic shows up in there as part of how he handles keywording.
— Jared Platt
Why metadata is always the thing nobody does
If you sell stock, license editorial, or just want to actually find your own photos again, you hit the same wall sooner or later: metadata. You come back from a shoot, you pick the keepers, edit them, and then comes the part everyone puts off — keywords, titles, captions, one image at a time.
So most people either rush through it or skip it altogether, and then wonder why nobody's finding their work. Jared's whole point is that metadata isn't really optional if you want your library to be useful — and these days the "I don't have time" excuse doesn't really hold up anymore, because the AI does the boring part for you.
What's in the class
It's called "Get Organized with Metadata — Stop searching. Start finding." Here's how Jared puts it:
"You remember taking that shot. You know it exists. But now you're digging through folders, scrolling through thumbnails, or hunting across multiple drives trying to locate it. That's not a storage problem — it's a metadata problem, and it's completely fixable."
He walks through how keywords, ratings, color labels, IPTC fields, Smart Collections and GPS all fit together in Lightroom Classic and Desktop — and, importantly, how to do it fast enough that you'll actually keep doing it. That's the bit that usually falls apart. He also gets into automating a lot of it so the organizing kind of happens on its own. The AI keywording side is where MetaMagic comes in.
It's aimed at people who already use Lightroom and feel like their catalog has gotten away from them. You don't need to know anything about metadata going in.
His other classes
If you grab a VIP pass, Jared's also doing two more sessions — one on importing (which sounds dull but is honestly where most workflows go wrong), and one on shooting and editing while traveling, using Lightroom across desktop, mobile and web. Both worth a look if you're in there anyway. You can see the full schedule here.
Exclusive promo codes for Summit attendees
Jared and I prepared two exclusive promo codes for the Summit audience — one for free viewers, one for VIP pass holders. The codes will be revealed during Jared's metadata class on Thursday June 4 at 10 AM EST and included in the official Summit swag bag PDF.
If you're already on the MetaMagic newsletter, the codes will be sent to you the same day the class airs. Not subscribed yet? Sign up here to get notified.
Getting in
You can watch the classes for free as they air — each one stays up for 48 hours. If you want to keep them and rewatch later, there's a VIP pass. It's $99 early bird until the 1st, then it goes up to $159. Worth knowing: once the Summit wraps on the 5th, only VIP holders keep access to the recordings, so if there's a class you really want to keep, grab the pass before then.
One last thing
What I like about this is that it wasn't a paid deal. Jared tried the plugin on his own catalog, bought credits, and decided it was worth showing. That's the only kind of endorsement that's actually worth anything.
If you catch the class on Thursday and have questions after, the contact form is the quickest way to get me — I answer everything myself, especially that week.
See you on the 4th.
— David Mallic, MetaMagic