Where does XnView save image star ratings?

[xnview]

the rating is saved in catalog

[VeloSteve]

And where is the catalog saved, or how can I find its path?

[jkm]

And where is the catalog saved, or how can I find its path?

Go to Help->About and look on the General tab for the path to the INI filename. The Catalog is in xnview.db and is stored in the same directory.

But it is a database file, not a list of ratings, so it may not be of much use to you. Be careful messing around with it, or you can destroy your catalog.

I'll also mention that there are multiple locations where star ratings can be saved; they need not be only in the catalog...

There are a plethora of options in Settings:General:File Operations, Settings:Metadata and Settings:Metadata:Sidecar that control this. You can leave ratings exclusively in the database/catalog, or you can store them in the actual image files themselves (if the image file format supports this) or they can be saved in XMP sidecar files (which is the method Adobe uses).

Metadata handling can be complicated. All the different options exist primarily to address issues of efficiency and compatibility with other software applications.

[VeloSteve]

Thanks - that does clarify some things.

I'm not concerned with compatibility with other software. I would just like to be able to rate images while traveling and then copy the images from that trip to my desktop when I get home. There I will use XnView as my image organizer, and other tools to do editing. My laptop screen is bad enough that I don't trust it for any editing where color rendition matters.

I have just learned that a star rating can be applied to the XMP metadata in a jpeg file, but not an Olympus *.ORF file. Maybe I need to play with sidecars.

[jkm]

If you primarily shoot raw, then yes you should look into sidecars. The inability of many raw formats to store a variety of metadata is one of the primary reasons Adobe went that way; it’s sort of a universal solution. JPEG files can hold any metadata you want internally, but you can also give them XMP sidecars, so that all metadata is handled the same way regardless of file type. That’s the essence of the sidecar concept.