I understand how some metadata should be protected from tampering. But some of these locked fields should be made editable. For example, some lenses (older lenses in particular) are not recognised by cameras in ways that they can be recorded in EXIF data. It would be very useful to be able to add or correct that information, not just for the accuracy of the metadata, but also to allow Photolab to adjust some of its processing accordingly.
PhotoLab was never designed to be a metadata editor. There are plenty of other software that are dedicated and that do the job so much better.
The ultimate is ExifTool, which is a command line tool that can do virtually anything with metadata and that is the engine behind several UIs.
There are some GUIs available for exiftool too.
ExifTool works well indeed…if you know which tags need to be edited and if the (raw) file allows such edits.
Sure, but Photolab’s USP is to be a one stop shop. Even the other apps they offer integrate seamlessly within Photolab. I don’t think it would take much programming to allow more metadata fields to be editable.