How do I import an iPhoto library into Lightroom, keeping adjustments intact?

Question

I’m using Lightroom 5.7 on OS X. Last night I imported my iPhoto library using Lightroom’s “File > Plug-in Extras > Import from iPhoto Library…” command. The photos all seem to have been imported, but only the original versions. There’s a collection called “Photos Adjusted in iPhoto”, but I’m not convinced that even the photos in here reflect the adjustments I made in iPhoto.

I would have expected each edited photo to have been imported in its original form and then had an “Edited in iPhoto” entry added in the History to reflect all of the iPhoto changes. Am I missing something, or is this functionality missing in Lightroom’s iPhoto importer? How can I import my library and bring along all of my adjustments too?

Answer 1

This is actually the expected behavior of the plugin. To quote from Adobe's blog article on the importer for Aperture/iPhoto (bold emphasis is mine):

Information that is not imported into Lightroom:

• Image adjustments
• Smart Albums
• Face Tag Region of Interest (face naming tags are mapped to keywords)
• Color Labels (other than optionally as keywords)
• Stacks (other than optionally as keywords)
• Any kind of creation (books, web galleries, etc) other than the collections that correspond to them

Given that both Lightroom and Aperture/iPhoto basically use proprietary metrics to perform adjustments, it would be pretty difficult to find a way to equate the two types of adjustments, and they probably wouldn't be exact matches, anyway.