So there are two issues being discussed here:
1) Being able to read XMP files written by another application (e.g., Lightroom)
2) Being able to save APh edits as XMP files - or any other kind of proprietary sidecar file format (which is the one that I advocated in my previous post).
While (1) would certainly be desirable, there are technical limitations that might prevent APh from consuming 3rd party generated XMP files. The set of available transformations and/or the algorithms implementing them are not the same, therefore the end results would not be the same, and I see how this could frustrate some users. Also, the APh team is not in control of what Adobe or others decide to write in their XMPs, and they might have to spend a significant amount of engineering time maintaining a specialized import module for each supported 3rd party.
Concerning (2), I can't see a major obstacle preventing this from happening (other than product decisions and developer time, of course :)). APh is all about non-destructive editing, and a sidecar file is a very sensible way to represent a process where each step can be described by a function applied to the original pixel layer. I would be very glad to hear from the APh team if this is a planned feature, and if yes then what is the ETA. At the moment of writing, not being able to save edits as a sidecar file is the only thing that prevents me from using APh more extensively in my workflow, just because more than doubling the size of each frame to, say, inpaint something out is not really a viable option. And if this is not viable for me, with an average production of a few dozen shots per month, imagine how professionals who shoot hundreds of frames per day must feel about it.
Thanks a lot, keep up the good work!
Daniele
