lr2resolve

Carry your Lightroom culling into DaVinci Resolve.

A small, free, cross-platform tool that reads star ratings, colour labels, pick/reject flags and keywords from your photo library's XMP (sidecars or embedded) and writes a CSV you can import straight into DaVinci Resolve's Media Pool — so the work you did culling in Lightroom (or any XMP-writing app) comes with you when you switch to grading stills in Resolve.

lr2resolve /path/to/Photos -o resolve_import.csv --stats

Then in Resolve: File → Import Metadata To → Media Pool.

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Why this exists

Resolve is increasingly capable for stills, and a lot of photographers are moving there (subscription fatigue, one tool for photo + video, colour-grading power). But when you leave Lightroom, your ratings and colour labels don't come with you — Resolve won't read them from your raws in a way that populates its own Rating / Clip Color fields, and pushing them across by hand is impractical for thousands of frames.

The individual pieces to solve this exist (Resolve documents a CSV metadata import; exiftool can read XMP; there are paid macOS utilities that build Resolve CSVs from Finder tags / EXIF). What was missing — as far as we could find — is a free, open, cross-platform tool aimed specifically at the stills-photographer migration: read Lightroom's XMP rating + colour label semantics and map them onto Resolve's fields, with the real-world file-matching pitfalls handled. That's what this is.

Prior art, honestly: this is not the first tool to put metadata into Resolve via CSV, and it doesn't claim to be. It's a focused, free, Windows/macOS/Linux tool for the specific Lightroom→Resolve photo culling case. If a paid tool already covers your platform and needs, use it. PRs to broaden coverage are very welcome.

What it moves

From (XMP)	To (Resolve)	Notes
xmp:Rating (0–5 stars)	Rating	1:1
xmp:Label (Red/Yellow/Green/…)	Clip Color (default)	or Flags, or both
xmp:Label	Flags (optional)	flags support Red; clip colours don't
xmpDM:Pick / xmp:Pick (±1)	Flags (Green/Red)	often empty for Lightroom-Classic-only libraries
dc:Subject / hierarchical	Keywords (optional)	enables auto Smart Bins
dc:Description / caption	Description (optional)

Only files that actually carry metadata produce a row, so the CSV stays small even across a huge library.

Install

Requires Python 3.9+ and exiftool on your PATH (or pass --exiftool /path/to/exiftool).

pip install lr2resolve            # once published to PyPI
# or, from source:
git clone https://github.com/Paulo-Ink/lr2resolve
cd lr2resolve && pip install -e .

Usage

# Simplest — raws + sidecars in a folder tree
lr2resolve ~/Photos -o resolve_import.csv

# See coverage first, write nothing
lr2resolve ~/Photos --stats --dry-run

# Send colour labels to BOTH clip colour and flags, and bring keywords
lr2resolve ~/Photos -o out.csv --label-target both --with-keywords

# Point at a specific exiftool on Windows
lr2resolve "D:\Photos" -o out.csv --exiftool "D:\tools\exiftool.exe"

Importing in Resolve

1. Put your media in the Media Pool.
2. File → Import Metadata To → Media Pool, choose the CSV.
3. In the dialog:
   • ✅ Match using filename
   • ✅ Ignore file extensions when matching
   • ❌ Match using clip start and end Timecode (untick — stills have no meaningful TC; leaving it on breaks the match)
   • Merge: Only update metadata items with entries in the source file

Your ratings appear in the Rating column and your labels colour the clips. Build Smart Bins on Clip Color / Rating to filter your keepers.

See docs/WORKFLOW.md for the full end-to-end guide (including optionally baking metadata into the raws first) and docs/GOTCHAS.md for the pitfalls we hit and solved.

Configuration

Every mapping is data-driven and overridable with a JSON file:

{
  "label_to_clip_color": { "Red": "Pink", "Rot": "Pink", "Grün": "Green" },
  "media_extensions": [".arw", ".dng", ".jpg"]
}

lr2resolve ~/Photos -o out.csv --config my_mappings.json

This is the main extension point for the community — non-English Lightroom label text, custom label sets, extra raw formats, house conventions.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md. Good first areas: more camera raw extensions, a reverse mode (Resolve → XMP), a small GUI, and confirming behaviour across Resolve versions.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.