Can I stop PSE from writing metadata directly to tiff files?

[Bobbert]

It takes a long time to synchronize my large tif files. Is there any way I can forces PSU to use xmp files instead?

[aaronj]

Synchronization Settings->XMP Storage Location set to 'Always as a sidecar file' presumably accomplishes what you want. It isn't file type specific, but you could change the option and manually save to other types if you wanted to write into other file types and not just universally to XMP sidecar files.

You could also deselect 'Automatically write out Catalog changes to the image file' and manually trigger writing at convenient times with either Tools->Save Metadata to File... or Ctrl-S on one or more specifically selected images. I do this for especially when I'm making multiple changes in a row to images and I don't want to be doing a bunch of unnecessary write operations for each change.

[Bobbert]

I don't seem to have that option.. see attached images. Not sure what I should be selecting here

[G8DHE]

Open the drop down list for "XMP Storage location" then select "Always as sidecar file" rather than the standard option.

[Bobbert]

Thanks, much appreciated