@joanna @John7 I haven’t had a chance to look at this in great detail so I apologise if I am talking out of turn but
The ‘Rotation’ is metadata (which you know better than I) which now resides in the image metadata (embedded or sidecar) not the DOP (except for a PL4 DOP which will be read and accepted by PL5 and the PL5 DOP which will be updated with changes made in PL5 but never read and used in PL5!)
However, the PL5 DOP can be used for tracking what is in the PL5 database, allegedly, i.e. checking the value of ‘Rotation’ in the PL5 DOP shows what should be in the database, regardless of whether this metadata has been flushed back to the image or not!
In addition any change to ‘Rotation’ will be stored in the image by Photo Supreme and by PL5 if it is allowed to [AS(ON)] or forced ‘Write to image’ change should be detected but depending on the AS(ON) AS(OFF) switch and except for the first discovery of an image in a directory which will always result in a ‘Read from image’ either explicitly or using equivalent code, at least on Win 10!
If there has been no change made externally to any of the metadata then there is no need to refresh the PL5 metadata, if there has been a change made externally then with AS(OFF) a ‘Read from image’ is required to refresh/re-align PL5 metadata.
PL5 should always read the metadata successfully, albeit I have had occasions when testing when it has failed to capture the change successfully but if the changes are all made prior to discovery by PL5 then that comes as a surprise to me. My recommendation would be to do all the copying without the directory being open in PL5 and then navigate in PL5 to discover the images anew!
I do a similar thing when testing using both FastRawViewer multi-windows with the “sharpness” options, either, none or both displayed but my preferred approach for my own purposes is export (from RAW) without NR to be able to quickly flick from one version to another to compare alternative edits “instantly”, avoiding any the render time delays!
My own testing:
From what I understand it seems that Photo Supreme rotations were not recognised by PL4 so you rotated again in PL4 and exported the rotated image for comparison. The photo and the DOP could then be carried anywhere and re-introduced to PL4 and all was the same!
With PL5 the DOP is no longer used as a source of metadata but the image is and the rotations undertaken have gone because PL5 cannot recognise the Photo Supreme ‘Rotation’ values. Your changes made on one system are no longer carried over via the DOP!
I attempted to repeat the workflow with images from my recent tests for PL5.2.1.4737 (i.e. PL5.all releases) on Win 10 has Metadata change detection issues! which hadn’t involved Photo Supreme Lite (in my case).
I opened a directory, rotated an image in PS (and changed the ‘Rating’ to make sure I could find the image) checked with FolderMonitor that there had been some update activity and opened in PL5 and ‘Rating’ change located but no rotation!
BUT there was no rotation detected in Photo Mechanic nor in Zoner nor in FasRawViewer, I found some evidence of rotation changes in the metadata in Beyond Compare but they are not being recognised by any other software that I used (the way that I have set up that program, at least)!
In addition I rotated in Photo Mechanic and inverted a JPG image (recognised by all the other software) but Photo Supreme continued to show the rotation as a quarter turn!
I repeated the test with a new directory and a dedicated PS image and the same thing happened. The problem appears to be with the way PS is handling rotation, or all the other programs are wrong or I am testing incorrectly (certainly possible, I don’t use PS Lite much) or all of the above!!
I am afraid your little “cheat” is no longer working because of the DOP change but the truth is that Photo Supreme 'Rotation" appears not to be compatible with other software.
If what I have said appears to be correct then we need to see if there is a “cheap” strategy that might work but it is breakfast time so bye for now!