• Welcome to the Lightroom Queen Forums! We're a friendly bunch, so please feel free to register and join in the conversation. If you're not familiar with forums, you'll find step by step instructions on how to post your first thread under Help at the bottom of the page. You're also welcome to download our free Lightroom Quick Start eBooks and explore our other FAQ resources.
  • Stop struggling with Lightroom! There's no need to spend hours hunting for the answers to your Lightroom Classic questions. All the information you need is in Adobe Lightroom Classic - The Missing FAQ!

    To help you get started, there's a series of easy tutorials to guide you through a simple workflow. As you grow in confidence, the book switches to a conversational FAQ format, so you can quickly find answers to advanced questions. And better still, the eBooks are updated for every release, so it's always up to date.
  • Dark mode now has a single preference for the whole site! It's a simple toggle switch in the bottom right-hand corner of any page. As it uses a cookie to store your preference, you may need to dismiss the cookie banner before you can see it. Any problems, please let us know!

Catalogue gone

Status
Not open for further replies.

Shar

Member
Joined
Aug 1, 2008
Messages
81
Location
Vancouver, BC Canada
Lightroom Experience
Intermediate
Lightroom Version
Classic
Lightroom Version Number
Lightroom Classic
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
I just went to edit a photo and it says 0 photos in Lightroom. What could have happened. I am fairly new here but I have used an old version of LR6.12 for years. This scares me. When I go to post a screen shot it says it is too big. How do I make it smaller please.
 
A couple of quick questions to rule out the obvious and to see if there is a backup plan. First, did you happen to open a new catalog by accident? And, do you have backups of the catalog in question?

--Ken
 
A couple of quick questions to rule out the obvious and to see if there is a backup plan. First, did you happen to open a new catalog by accident? And, do you have backups of the catalog in question?

--Ken
Thanks Ken. I don’t think I opened a new catalog by accident. I do not know if I have backups. I will look tomorrow as I am awfully tired tonight am going to try to forget and get some sleep
 
Thanks Ken. I don’t think I opened a new catalog by accident. I do not know if I have backups. I will look tomorrow as I am awfully tired tonight am going to try to forget and get some sleep
In Lightroom on the Menu, go to {File}{Open Recent...} One of the catalogs in the list will be the one that has all of your images.
 
In Lightroom on the Menu, go to {File}{Open Recent...} One of the catalogs in the list will be the one that has all of your images.
If you can not find it you could do a search in finder. Search at 'lrcat'


It is not under recent
If you can not find it you could do a search in finder. Search at 'lrcat'
If you can not find it you could do a search in finder. Search at 'lrcat'
In Lightroom on the Menu, go to {File}{Open Recent...} One of the catalogs in the list will be the one that has all of your images.
In Lightroom on the Menu, go to {File}{Open Recent...} One of the catalogs in the list will be the one that has all of your images.
If you can not find it you could do a search in finder. Search at 'lrcat'
A couple of quick questions to rule out the obvious and to see if there is a backup plan. First, did you happen to open a new catalog by accident? And, do you have backups of the catalog in question?

--Ken
Thanks Ken. I don’t think I opened a new catalog by accident. I do not know if I have backups. I will look tomorrow as I am awfully tired tonight am going to try to forget and get some sleep
I just went to edit a photo and it says 0 photos in Lightroom. What could have happened. I am fairly new here but I have used an old version of LR6.12 for years. This scares me. When I go to post a screen shot it says it is too big. How do I make it smaller please.
 
Ok I found my open catalogue and found my irc at file. When I click on it takes me to a page that says, click the import button to begin. When I click that my photos come back but there are no collections and I cannot get into the develop module. Would it be better if I uninstalled and reinstalled. Would my catalogue come back? In all the years I have been using Lightroom I have never had this problem. I need to get to my pictures to edit them. Thank you.
Also what is the source that I use at the top. Screen Shot 2020-04-30 at 2.52.13 PM.png
 
Ok I found my open catalogue and found my irc at file. When I click on it takes me to a page that says, click the import button to begin. When I click that my photos come back but there are no collections and I cannot get into the develop module. Would it be better if I uninstalled and reinstalled. Would my catalogue come back? In all the years I have been using Lightroom I have never had this problem. I need to get to my pictures to edit them. Thank you.
Also what is the source that I use at the top.View attachment 14449
 
Ok my images loaded but now says it is Building Standard previews and it is at about 2500 out of 20500. I do not understand this. It will take all night. Sorry if I am not asking these questions in the right place. I am very concerned as I have some images I have to get at and edit. Thanks anyone.
 
Ok my images loaded but now says it is Building Standard previews and it is at about 2500 out of 20500. I do not understand this.
You made a new catalog and imported a part of your images again. I think this is not what you want. You did not find your original catalog (the lrcat file) but simply started a new one. This explains the page you described and the notifications that followed.

If you can not find the original lrcat file, why not restore a recent backup of it? I think that is the most easy way to get up-and-running agian.
 
How do I do that please? I have not been using LR for several months. Was trying on1 but did not like as much so subscribed to LR. My cat was in LR6 and when I downloaded LRClassic the cat came in. Now the cat is gone from 6 and it tells me it is being used by another programme. I do not know what to do. thanks for replying
 
If you had both LR6 and Classic installed at the same time and wanted Classic to open an old LR6 file, it would do so by creating a copy of the old file with an appended name (usually adding "-2"). This means that you should still have the old LR6 version of the file that can be opened by LR6. And you should have the new version of the file which can only be opened by Classic. That new file is not backward compatible and cannot be read by LR6.

I would again do a search of the drive(s) that contain your catalog(s) to identify all of them. All catalogs, primary or backup, Classic or LR6 should end with an lrcat extension, so run a search by that extension and then take inventory to see what catalogs you actually have. Then you could attempt to sort them out if that is needed.

--Ken
 
Thank you Ken for taking the time. I have spent more than 12 hours on this. Here is a screen shot of what I have now got. These pictures are here but in develop I cannot get into my collections or show any presets. Am I going crazy? I am 78 and do not handle stress very well these days. Every time I try to enclose a screenshot it says it is too big. How do I correct that please
 
Every time I try to enclose a screenshot it says it is too big. How do I correct that please
Do you have Dropbox, OneDrive or another cloudservice? When you do it's possible to put the screenshot there and share the link to it here.
 
Every time I try to enclose a screenshot it says it is too big. How do I correct that please
Open the screen shot in the Previews app. On the tools menu choose Resize. Adjust the long edge to 2048 pixels or less and make sure it is proportional so there is no distortion. Export it as a JPEG and if need be reduce the quality until it is small enough to meed the attachment requirements
 
Thank you but honestly I have never had this happen before in all the places I have sent a screenshot. I do not know how to open in previews app. or at least I can open it but cannot get the screenshot into it.. I think I have had it and am just going to cancel my Lightroom subscription and find another editor. I have got the images. back in my library but when I get to develop it says File cannot be found. For something that was working fine two days ago this is a mystery. Thanks for trying to help.
 
I am 78 and do not handle stress very well these days.
Right now Shari, most of the world is under stress and a lot of us are not handling it very well. I would suggest leaving this alone for a day or so. I am assuming it is not life or death, and continuing to frustrate yourself is not going to help you get to where you need to be.

After a break, try to take another screen shot. Is there a setting that allows you to either compress or control the quality of the image (I am using Windows so I am not familiar with what programs you have available on your Mac)? If you can get a screen shot with a file size that is not too big, then post it. If not can you follow Roelof's suggestion of putting online somewhere with a link to it that you can place in a post?

If we can see what you have, we can probably offer more specific advice.

Regardless of whether you choose to stay with LR or not, the main thing you want to make sure of is that you can see all the image files outside of LR and that you have them backed up somewhere. If that is not the case, then you need to address that before trying to tackle any LR catalog issues.

--Ken
 
do not know how to open in previews app. or at least I can open it but cannot get the screenshot into it.. I think I have had it and am just going to cancel my Lightroom subscription and find another editor. I have got the images. back in my library but when I get to develop it says File cannot be found. For something that was working fine two days ago this is a mystery.
You can take a screen shot from the Previews app. From the Previews app menu {File}{Take Screenshot}{From Selection}.
The problem with high-resolution mo it ors (like a 24"iMac), the size in pixels for the screen shot is large than the forum permits. You need to downsize the image to meet the size limits.
You will not find another non destructive editor that is any less complex. They all have learning curves. Even the Apple Photos app. Apple has dumbed down the Photos app to the point that your choices are limited as to what can be dome yo enhance your images in Photos and fancy printing is out of the question. With your Z6 you have one of the most advanced cameras available. It needs an app like Lightroom Classic, or On1 PhotoRAW, or CaptureOne Pro to produce the photo with the excellence it deserves.

Age is just a number, I am 73. If I can figure this out, so can you. Lightroom is a place to go to get away from all of the other stresses in the world today. You are home and you are safe. True off the TV because there is nothing new and the media only want to keep you in fear and glued to the TV to keep their ad revenue high.
 
Thank you Ken and Clee for taking the time to respond and suggest. I was on this all day yesterday from 6 am. I was with Adobe remote for an hour And half in the afternoon and he could not find my catalog or the problem. He worked on finding missing images which I know how to do but not for 35,000. When we called it quits because he did not seem to understand the problem I then went to find an image in my pictures folder from finder to use in ON1 and there were NO images in my picture folders. I again contacted Adobe and was on remote for over two hours with the same result. Now I have NO images and from them doing what they did All photographs has shrunk from 35,000 to13,000. I do have an Iomega Backup but I cannot figure out how to restore. I had resigned myself to starting from scratch and building a new catalog but am now horrified that I cannot get any images. I tried to get to an image saved in an export folder to send out for a canvas and nothing comes up. Paying for subscription from Canada for me was a big deal and now I am regretting that decision. Everything was great for 2 weeks. I may call the Geek Squad which is costly and annoying because I do not understand how I woke up one morning to no photos in LR. Clee you are right. I have gone through two cancers and editing and playing with photos has been my salvation. in fact during my recovery was when I found my interest in Ps and LR in 2005. Getting the Nikon Z6 was huge and now this. I make cards and take orders and to think I have none of my images is Sad. Ken, you are right, I will try to take a break, although hard to think of anything else thank you both for your kind comments and understanding.
 
Shari, welcome to the club! I'm a three timer here, and I know that if we both made it through those ordeals more than once, that this issue can also be solved. Right now, leave the whole LR issue alone. When you are ready to work on this, consider the following:
  • Do you have a backup beyond the Iomega, perhaps on a hard drive?
  • Do you/did you ever use an external hard drive to store the images or other files? If so, then you should look at that drive to see if some/any images are located there?
  • Do you still have copies of any of the images on the memory cards? If so, do not format those cards!
  • Are your files/folders on your computer reasonably organized and are you comfortable with browsing through them with the Finder? Look around to see if you can see the actual image files. Are they raw files and/or jpeg files? Try to search your machine by the file extension, .nef (for Nikon) or .jpg and see what the search returns. Yes, there could be a large number of files, but try to see if any of them are the images and where they are located.
  • Remember, since LR is just a catalog of where your images are located, unless you specifically told it to delete the files (and you have received a warning before you were allowed to do so, the files were not deleted by LR
Finally, a solution to your screen shot issue would be to set your camera to a lower resolution jpeg file and take a picture of your screen. Try shooting at 1/60th of a second (I believe that is the shutter speed for monitors in North America). Then post the image.

--Ken
 
Thanks Ken. I am back at it. I have done a smaller screen shot and it seemed to work. When I go into my pictures this is what comes up. This is what was left from the Adobe Remote guy. There are no images in my folders. I tried searching for .nef files and what came up was on1 and then clicking on the image, nothing came up. Unfortunately when I got my new Nikon Z6 I had to get an XQD card and only have the one as it was expensive. I used an external drive about 10 years ago so have those photos but they are not the ones I need or want for my cards and canvases. I am leaving the LR issue. If I can just find my pictures that were in the folders I could find as needed and import into Lightroom. Let's see if you get this screen shot.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 10.27.35 AM.png
    Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 10.27.35 AM.png
    292.6 KB · Views: 215
  • Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 10.50.12 AM.png
    Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 10.50.12 AM.png
    322.8 KB · Views: 194
Hi Shari,

First, the screen shots are fine. In looking at the first one, it is telling me that there are over 25 thousand files under that folder and they they are accounting for almost 1TB of space. This is good news!

And, if you used the XQD card and have not overwritten it, it will also have all of your Z6 files. This could be good news as well. Now, here is where I need @clee01l since he is a Mac user. I am wondering if your OS has the required drivers to allow you to see those images in the Finder if you clicked on the Pictures folder or any subfolders inside of it. Even if you cannot see the image preview, you should be able to see the files listed. What is showing if you click on the Pictures folder in the Finder or on the desktop. What does it show?

--Ken
 
This is what is shows and when I click on anything there is just a blank space. Here is a copy of my computer stats. I do not understand what that Adobe tech could have done to lose all those images because I did not touch anything.
 

Attachments

  • Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 11.41.14 AM.jpg
    Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 11.41.14 AM.jpg
    502.3 KB · Views: 214
  • Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 11.43.36 AM.jpg
    Screen Shot 2020-05-02 at 11.43.36 AM.jpg
    163.3 KB · Views: 188
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top