Catalogs Catalog Problem? Not sure what to do, or why it happened>

[WesternGuy]

Lightroom Version

Lightroom Classic Version 11.0

Operating System

1. Windows 10

When the last version of Lightroom was provided through the Adobe Creative Cloud update procedure a new catalog was required. However, the new catalog was, for whatever reason, only capable of finding about 20K of my photographs in a folder that has in excess of 70K images. It also overlooked/deleted? all of the Smart Collections that I had built over the years.

I have never had this happen before (you have all heard that before I am sure) and I do not know what to do. Is there a way to generate a new catalog that will capture all of my images including the keywords for each one? Can I get all my Smart Collections back, some how? I have a good backup of my images, but I am not sure if there are any additional items I should be backing up when I back up my image files. Any insight or assistance that anyone can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

WesternGuy

 

[Johan Elzenga]

Most likely you upgraded the wrong catalog (an old copy). That seems to happen frequently.

 

[WesternGuy]

Johann, interesting speculation, but I I only keep the last catalog available for upgrade, any others are either deleted or moved to a backup folder. Do you have any insight into my questions?

WesternGuy

 

[Replytoken]

When the last version of Lightroom was provided through the Adobe Creative Cloud update procedure a new catalog was required. However, the new catalog was, for whatever reason, only capable of finding about 20K of my photographs in a folder that has in excess of 70K images. It also overlooked/deleted? all of the Smart Collections that I had built over the years.

I have never had this happen before (you have all heard that before I am sure) and I do not know what to do. Is there a way to generate a new catalog that will capture all of my images including the keywords for each one? Can I get all my Smart Collections back, some how? I have a good backup of my images, but I am not sure if there are any additional items I should be backing up when I back up my image files. Any insight or assistance that anyone can provide will be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

WesternGuy

Have you looked at the folder in File Explorer where the images reside to see if all 70k of images are physically there?

--Ken

 

[Paul McFarlane]

Try opening the previous catalog again (it'll want to convert) to eliminate any error during conversion. Also, you could try a previous backup from before the conversion.

 

[WesternGuy]

Have you looked at the folder in File Explorer where the images reside to see if all 70k of images are physically there?

--Ken

Yes, I have done that. They are all there, and they are all present in my backup, if I need it.

WesternGuy

 

[WesternGuy]

Try opening the previous catalog again (it'll want to convert) to eliminate any error during conversion. Also, you could try a previous backup from before the conversion.

Paul, thanks for the idea. I will look and see if I can find the previous catalog. I was also thinking of restoring all the images from my backup, but right now, there is no difference between what is on the "operational" copy and what is on the backup. Is there anything to be gained from restoring the backup under these circumstances?

Any hints as to what I should be looking for with the catalog? I am a real newbie when it comes to troubleshooting Lightroom as this is the most work I have ever had to to do to fix anything with it.

WesternGuy

 

[Paul McFarlane]

However, the new catalog was, for whatever reason, only capable of finding about 20K of my photographs in a folder that has in excess of 70K images.

Hi

Can you just expand on this comment please? I read it (and I think Johan did) that the catalog was only showing a total count of 20k images (in All Photographs in the Catalog panel) - is that the case? Or is it showing a total there of 70k and it looks like 50k are missing?

 

[WesternGuy]

Hi

Can you just expand on this comment please? I read it (and I think Johan did) that the catalog was only showing a total count of 20k images (in All Photographs in the Catalog panel) - is that the case? Or is it showing a total there of 70k and it looks like 50k are missing?

HI Paul, I have a folder named Lightroom Photos, that is the top level folder for my images. It contains 70K + images. Lightroom 10 ran okay. The catalog it had created recognized all my photos and. I guess, the Smart Collections that I had built over the past few years.
For some reason, when Lightroom 11 came along and converted the "10" catalog, it only came up with 20K of those photos, as well, it did not "find" all of my Smart Collections. It looks like 50K+ are "missing" as it shows only a total of 22.184 images.

I want to know how to build (rebuild?) a new catalog inside Lightroom 11 that will recognize all my photos, together with their keywords, in the previously mentioned folder, AND find all my Smart Collections that I spent so much time building very meticulously.

I do hope this clarifies things. If you have any more questions, please let me know and I will try and answer them. I really want to get all my images back in one catalog that covers them all and has the keywords as well, for each of the images that have keywords.

WesternGuy

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I want to know how to build (rebuild?) a new catalog inside Lightroom 11 that will recognize all my photos, together with their keywords, in the previously mentioned folder, AND find all my Smart Collections that I spent so much time building very meticulously.

There is only one answer to that question: start from a backup catalog and upgrade that one. That is what backups are for, and you said that you do make backups so that should work.

 

[Replytoken]

HI Paul, I have a folder named Lightroom Photos, that is the top level folder for my images. It contains 70K + images. Lightroom 10 ran okay. The catalog it had created recognized all my photos and. I guess, the Smart Collections that I had built over the past few years.
For some reason, when Lightroom 11 came along and converted the "10" catalog, it only came up with 20K of those photos, as well, it did not "find" all of my Smart Collections. It looks like 50K+ are "missing" as it shows only a total of 22.184 images.

I want to know how to build (rebuild?) a new catalog inside Lightroom 11 that will recognize all my photos, together with their keywords, in the previously mentioned folder, AND find all my Smart Collections that I spent so much time building very meticulously.

I do hope this clarifies things. If you have any more questions, please let me know and I will try and answer them. I really want to get all my images back in one catalog that covers them all and has the keywords as well, for each of the images that have keywords.

WesternGuy

You do not want to try and correct this LR 11 problem catalog unless it was your only option. I agree with Johan that you should go back to the LR 10 catalog in LR 11 and let it create/update a new copy of it. Adobe wisely designed this process to protect the older version since the new version is a copy which is then updated. Starting over, assuming that you did not do any new work in the newly created catalog, is easy. If that newly created version also has issues, then I would check the old version in LR 10 just to make sure that everything is showing up correctly there.

--Ken

 

[mkirker]

I have had the same problem with V-11 on my Mac -- It seems to have updated some easier version of Lightroom with tons of newer folders not included and all my smart folders missing. I hav tried the suggestions and the new version shows the same issues. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

 

[clee01l]

I have had the same problem with V-11 on my Mac -- It seems to have updated some easier version of Lightroom with tons of newer folders not included and all my smart folders missing. I hav tried the suggestions and the new version shows the same issues. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

You had a working catalog with all of the files and folders before upgrading to v11. You need to find that “*.lrcat” file and open it with the current v11 app.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[mkirker]

Yes, everything worked great until the upgrade. Let me give that a try thank you

 

[mkirker]

this is what I get when I try to open the older version - It won't let me open it without upgrading.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

this is what I get when I try to open the older version - It won't let me open it without upgrading.

That is normal and cannot be avoided. Let it upgrade, it will create an upgraded copy of the catalog.

 

[WesternGuy]

Well folks, I think I finally got my images back into a catalog that seems to work. I found my old "10" catalog and upon attempt to use it, it was converted by Lightroom to the "11" catalog, I then "Added" all my images in my Image Library back into Lightroom using that catalog. This worked, except it would appear that not all the keywords came through. The Smart Collections show that there are 11,895 images that do not have keywords. I will continue to check this aspect of the restoration as I review the images over the weekend.

My thanks to Johann and Replytoken for their ideas on an approach that seems to have worked.

The only remaining problem is what happened to my Smart Collections. Except for those generated by Lightroom, all of the ones that I created seemed to have disappeared without leaving a forwarding address.

WesternGuy

 

[WesternGuy]

mkirker, once you have the new catalog, point it at your Image library and see if it will "Add" the images you have to the new catalog. That is what I did and it seems to have worked, with some small differences from the old catalog. So far, the only difference is the lack of key words. Some images seem to have remains of keywords that were applied with some missing and others just have the keywords missing altogether. I will be working on checking out the survival of keywords this weekend.

WesternGuy

 

[mkirker]

I opened an older version and it converts it to version 11 --- My pics are still not in the lightroom library, they are in my lightroom library. I can add them but none of the edits are there and my smart folders are gone. I am giving up. I will try and figure out how to proceed from here.

 

[Johan Elzenga]

I opened an older version and it converts it to version 11 --- My pics are still not in the lightroom library, they are in my lightroom library. I can add them but none of the edits are there and my smart folders are gone. I am giving up. I will try and figure out how to proceed from here.

If you open and convert an older catalog instead of the most recent catalog, then obviously any images that you imported after that older catalog was last used, will not be in the converted catalog. And because edits are stored in the catalog, not in the images, it is also obvious that adding these images to the converted catalog will add them as unedited images.

 

[prbimages]

Just kind of thinking aloud here, but you could try this:

1. Make sure you have good backups of everything (catalogs and images).
2. Identify which is your most recent catalog PRIOR to the upgrade to version 11.
3. REVERT your Lightroom Classic to the old version 10.4 (using the Creative Cloud Desktop application, click on the "More actions" triple dot icon, and choose "Other versions").
4. OPEN your most recent catalog PRIOR to version 11 using the OLDER version 10.4 of Lightroom Classic. If all is well, the catalog should just open without drama. Spend some time verifying that all is as you expect with this catalog - that all images can be found, all edits are there, all smart folders are there. If this is NOT the case, then you will know that your problems were not caused by the upgrade, but something else is going on. If everything DOES look OK, make sure that older catalog is safely backed up, and you can retry the upgrade process.

 

[mkirker]

Just kind of thinking aloud here, but you could try this:

1. Make sure you have good backups of everything (catalogs and images).
2. Identify which is your most recent catalog PRIOR to the upgrade to version 11.
3. REVERT your Lightroom Classic to the old version 10.4 (using the Creative Cloud Desktop application, click on the "More actions" triple dot icon, and choose "Other versions").
4. OPEN your most recent catalog PRIOR to version 11 using the OLDER version 10.4 of Lightroom Classic. If all is well, the catalog should just open without drama. Spend some time verifying that all is as you expect with this catalog - that all images can be found, all edits are there, all smart folders are there. If this is NOT the case, then you will know that your problems were not caused by the upgrade, but something else is going on. If everything DOES look OK, make sure that older catalog is safely backed up, and you can retry the upgrade process.

Thats exactly what I did. I backed up all my older Lrcats and backups, just in case. Then I deleted them all but the most recent back up (the one that worked prior to the upgrade). I opened it and upgraded it. Everything is now back to normal and working properly. Looks like I just had to many older versions of my catalog and was using an older one that kept upgrading. So far all seems fine. Thank you to everyone for the help and advice.