Another annoying beginner catalog problem

[MikeeR]

Lightroom Version Number

LR Classic CC

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hi All

Just beginning my Lightroom journey, or attempting to, long overdue. Coming from the relatively simple world of Nikon Capture NX2, the complexities of the Catalog are proving more challenging than I was hoping for. Having read quite widely around the subject I thought I had enough knowledge to at least tentatively start.

I thought I'd make it easy on myself by shooting a few shots this morning, manually creating a sub-folder on my F:drive under Photos called 2018 Subject, copying and renaming the photos from the card to that folder using Nikon Transfer which I've used for years. I then imported that folder into Lightroom. Seemed to work well. I edited about a dozen raw photos in Develop mode and exported them as jpegs into a further sub-folder called 2018 Subject Edt. This is probably a clunky way of doing things but it is the sort of work flow I've used for years.

Now when I come back to my desktop later in the day and try to open Lightroom I get this message:

I looked at my Creative Cloud list and sure enough my Lightroom version had an "Update" next to it. Cool, just need to update LR, which I did. But now I continue to get that same message if I try to open LR from my LR desktop icon. When I look in my C:drive Lightroom folder there are only one Lightroom Previews folder and one Lightroom Catalog file. If I double click on the LR Catalog it does open Lightroom and show my drive and folder structure but if I try to open todays 2018 Subject folder, nothing comes up. If I go to explorer all the originals are there and the edited jpegs in the Edt sub-folder.

Any thoughts? I would prefer to keep using Nikon Transfer to copy my photos from card to drive, it seems way more simple to me than the LR option.

Of course this is not to mention the numerous hang-ups and clitches that kept freezing my PC during the develop stage.

Thanks in advance.

 

[davidedric]

Can't answer all your questions, but be aware that upgrading Lightroom can (will?) leave desktop shortcuts pointing to the old version. Can be very confusing.
Dave

 

[Jim Wilde]

Yep, that's almost certainly what's happening. Clear out all the Desktop and Taskbar LR icons, then launch LR from the CC Desktop app, once it's active, right-click on the active icon in the Taskbar and pin it.

Once you've mastered the LR import process, and setup an import preset or two, importing using LR cannot be any simpler.

 

[MikeeR]

Thanks Dave and Jim, of course you were correct. New LR icon opens it LR OK.

Unfortunately LR does not seem to see any photos in the 2018 Subject folder even though it has 99 next to it (the number of image files in the folder) and lists the Edt sub-folder. I've obviously done something wrong here. It's strange, when I open LR and it shows my folder structure, you can click on each folder and will start to preview all the images in each folder, except for my so called test folder of yesterday, the 2018 Subject, I click on that and it's just blank!

Dave, I'm sure I saw one of your posts where you mentioned your file structure, file naming and import workflow that actually made good sense to me. That may have been from a post some time ago. Do you still do that?

 

[Jim Wilde]

Unfortunately LR does not seem to see any photos in the 2018 Subject folder even though it has 99 next to it (the number of image files in the folder) and lists the Edt sub-folder. I've obviously done something wrong here. It's strange, when I open LR and it shows my folder structure, you can click on each folder and will start to preview all the images in each folder, except for my so called test folder of yesterday, the 2018 Subject, I click on that and it's just blank!

Do you see anything in the Grid when you select that folder, such as blank thumbnails? Or is the entire grid blank? What happens if you click on the Edit sub-folder? What's the total of images showing in the Folders Panel for that sub-folder? In the Library menu, what happens if you uncheck the option to "Show Photos in Sub-Folders", does the image count for the 2018 Subject folder change to 0? If the total stays at 99, can you post a screenshot of the Folders Panel and Grid when the subject folder is selected (but first make sure you don't have any filter active).

 

[MikeeR]

Thanks for your rely Jim. Here's a screenshot of part of my LR display:

After starting to compile this post I went back to LR to check what I was seeing. I clicked on Catalog and sure enough the images were there, when I clicked on Folders again, images were displayed in Grid form as I expected. Not sure what I is going on exactly. Obviously my import process and initial folder structure is not great. I don't have a clear idea on how to copy from my established Photos folder into Lightroom, I'm not a prolific shooter but I wouldn't want to import the whole Photos folder at once I wouldn't think.

Second screenshot: