If you’ve deleted your original files, you don’t have backups, and they’re not in the Recycle Bin (Windows) / Trash (Mac), the next thing to check is whether the photos are still on the memory card. If you haven’t reshot the entire card, it may be possible to rescue some of the original photos using recovery software. You could also try recovery software on the hard drive, to see if they can be rescued from there.
If that’s not possible, before you do anything else, close Lightroom, find the catalog on the hard drive, and duplicate the catalog and previews, just in case you make a mistake.
Adobe have written a script that retrieves Lightroom’s previews and saves them as image files, however there are also a couple of free plug-ins which make the process easier. The resulting JPEGs are only the size and quality of the previews, but they’re better than nothing.
You can download Jeffrey’s plug-in from http://www.lrq.me/friedl-extractpreviews
- Download and double click to unzip the plug-in.
- Go to File menu > Plug-in Manager and press the Add button. Navigate to the plug-in you’ve just unzipped.
- Back in Lightroom’s Grid view, select the photos you need to rescue.
- Go to File menu > Plugin Extras > Extract Preview Images to show the dialog.
- Select the location for the extracted previews and press Begin Extraction.
- In the results dialog, the plug-in reports on the size and quality of the extracted previews.
Thanks sp much for this artical – i have just recoverd some treasured family photo’s that i thought were lost for ever. I had no idea that this was possable and had given up ever recovering these images from a busted hard drive. I happend upon this artical and gave it a try – worked perfectly 🙂 🙂 🙂
OMG THANK YOU VERYYYYYYYYYYYY MUCH , YOU SAVED MY DAY!
I downloaded the above and do not know how to retrieve the plug in to be able to export the previews to jpegs
At which point in the above instructions do you hit a problem?
Thanks…unfortunately most of the photos I was able to retrieve are blurred in their standard size, and are inserted in the folders only as tiny thumbnails. Others do reproduce sharp in standard size. Any way to get the thumbnails to show up sharp in standard size?
Sorry to hear that. You’ll only be able to retrieve whatever previews were already created, and it sounds like your fuzzy ones only had tiny thumbnails saved.
I have tried used this plugin on a trial of 6 images and each reports “no preview found”. What other conditions have to exist in order to recover a preview. I have multiple catalogues, backups, preview data files etc going back a long way. When viewed in LR all files are shown as missing. ( I know why) I have many of the original files but not in their original locations and renamed as part of the file recovery process. Any suggestions would be welcome.
Does Lightroom actually display these images? If not, then there are no Previews.
Also, if they do display, check under the Histogram to see you have Smart Previews for them (the words will appear there) – if you, Select the photo(s) and File menu > Export, using DNG as the file type. This will export the Smart Previews.
No LR does not display the images, that is what I am trying to get back to. I was hoping to be able to restore the original names to the recovered images but I may have to re import having renamed them.
That tells us that there are no Previews for those images – hence the Plugin not being able to create them. If you can set to the original names and simply put in the same location, Lightroom will see them and you’ll be back to normal.
This blog deals with that:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/lightroom-photos-missing-fix/
Dear Victoria, thank you for what you do to help photographers.
Yesterday i deleted some important raw files, after that i deleted the previews in Lightroom Classic.
Is there a way i could recover those previews? I could find the trash in Lightroom Classic.
Is it stored somewhere on my computer for some days?
Did some research on internet and could not find any answer. I don’t think the ‘Jeffrey’s plug-in’ could help. Thank you for your help, Fred
If they’re removed from the catalog as well as the hard drive, it’s very unlikely, sorry. Time for recovery software to see if you can recover them, either from the memory card or the hard drive.
Hello Victoria. How are you? Recently I had a problem with my hard drive and I lost some files. I got the plugin to save the images, but not all of them came with a good size. Is there any way to resolve this? All have visual intelligence.
I’m afraid not Thiago, the plug-in saves the largest previews that are available. That said, the Enhance Tool’s Super Resolution setting may be able to increase the size of the small ones a bit, or there’s dedicated software like Topaz Gigapixel or On1 Resize.
thank you so much for this plug in!! it saves my career as a photographer!!
Hello, thank you so much for this! Why are some of my images saving as standard vs thumbnail? Even if they are from the same timeframe? Is there any way to get the standard version of it when the plug in downloaded the thumbnail?
The standard previews are built when you view the photos in Library module’s Loupe view, if you haven’t already created them in the import stage. If the plug-in can only find thumbnails, no bigger previews were stored, sorry.