NTFS - Read-only drives on macOS
If you've rated your images within Narrative and then transferred them to Lightroom, but notice that the ratings or tags are missing, it could be due to your drive being set as read-only.
A read-only drive prevents Narrative from writing any data to your images, including metadata such as ratings and tags. Consequently, Narrative cannot generate XMP files, leading to the absence of ratings or tags in Lightroom.
NTFS is a widely used file system on Windows-based PCs, macOS can read NTFS files, however, it is not possible to write-data to NTFS drives on macOS.
You can find out if your drive is formatted as NTFS by Right clicking your drive > Get Info, then checking next to the 'Format'. If it says NTFS next to this, this will be the reason your ratings/edits are not shipping to Lightroom.
To resolve this issue, you'll need to switch to a different drive that enables Narrative to write metadata to your images successfully. You can research your drive's format to determine if it supports both reading and writing data on macOS.
Case-sensitive drives
Another possibility could be due to a case-sensitive drive. This issue is caused due to Select and Lightroom handling file names differently on case-sensitive drives: Lightroom writes the XMP files in lower case (.xmp), whereas Select writes them in upper case (.XMP).
To check if your drive is case-sensitive, follow these steps:
Navigate to Applications > Utilities > Disk Utility
Check Drive Information
In Disk Utility, select the drive you're using with Narrative Select.
Look at the details provided for the drive to see if it's case-sensitive.
If your drive is case-sensitive, you will need to move your files to a non-case-sensitive drive.
My drive is read/write and not case-sensitive yet it's still not working?
If your drive format supports reading and writing data on macOS, please follow these steps:
Copy some of your RAW images and place them in a new folder on your PC's internal HDD/SSD.
Create a new Narrative project using this new folder, and make sure to add star and colour ratings to these images.
Ship all of these images into a new Lightroom Catalog. Under the 'Apply During Import' settings, ensure your Metadata is set to 'None'.
If the ratings are now successfully being added to your images, it's possible that there is an issue with the current drive you're using, we'd suggest using an alternate drive.
If you're experiencing any other issues or the article above hasn't resolved your issue, please contact support via the chat bubble in the bottom right corner.