Lightroom Camera did not save pictures

[SaraLH]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Mobile Android 8.1.2

Operating System

1. Android

Recently I decided to start taking cell phone pictures (Samsung S10+, 500 GB) with the Lightroom camera, saving the photos as dng files. Seemed to work just great.
Yesterday we were underway and made a stop in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a photogenic spot if there ever was one. I had left my regular camera at home, so my cell camera was it for the day. In the car on the way home I realized to my dismay that about half the pictures I took were somehow not there. And I could swear that I viewed some of the missing pictures as soon as they were taken. The photos are not great works of art, but it miffs me to have lost the shots, especially since it was a very quiet day in this town which is usually jam-packed with tourists.
Has anyone heard of / experienced this phenomenon? It there any way to rescue these photos from a cache on the phone? I see that there is a large LR cache on the phone but can't find it when I explore the phone storage.

Thanks for any tips.

 

[Ken @ Canadian Rockies]

Are you looking at your Camera Roll? And they're not there. Or is this looking at them with LR mobile, even though the App is configured to import your photos from the Camera Roll? Can you use the Android File Manager, and look through some of the folders which might be holding them? Like Pictures, Download, etc..

... oh, I forgot to ask. Do you have a MiniSD card on your phone? Maybe they are being stored there? Did you ever see them on your phone? Or just noticed they were never there after your photo shoot.

 

[SaraLH]

Thanks for your reply!
I could have sworn that I viewed at least some of them as soon as they were taken. As we were leaving town I atarted checking the photos an noticed that heaps were missing. The next day I hooked the phone to the computer and looked through every folder for jpg or dng files (I had it set to save as dng) and found nothing new. I also checked the SD card and they didn't land there either.
The question is how do I access the Lightroom cache, just in case they got saved there.

 

[clee01l]

Do I understand that if you open Lightroom app on the phone, you do not see the newest added photos? If you took the photos using the Lightroom access to the camera, these photos should be stored in the Adobe Cloud and seen through the "All Photos" Album or "Recent Photos" Album. Local copies would be on the phone but the master copy is stored and sync'd to the Adobe Cloud. If you do not see these photos using the Lightroom app, then there is a more critical problem.

 

[prbimages]

It there any way to rescue these photos from a cache on the phone? I see that there is a large LR cache on the phone but can't find it when I explore the phone storage.

Sorry, I cannot find any information on where the cache is stored. Like you, I have tried browsing through the file system on my Android phone and can't find it either. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable than me might be able to help?

As for the photos - did you have syncing on when you took the photos? If you did, then the photos *should* have been uploaded to the Adobe Cloud. If the photos were subsequently deleted somehow, then they would have been moved to the Cloud's "Deleted" folder, where they will remain for 60 days. You can check there by going to https://lightroom.adobe.com/ in a web browser (logging in if necessary), and looking in the "Deleted" folder.

If that doesn't help, you should probably try doing some test shots and uploads with the Lightroom camera to make sure that everything is working as it should, and as you expect.

 

[SaraLH]

All of the photos that were actually saved were synced properly to the Cloud and Classic.

What I suspect is that some of the times after the phone screen timed out, the camera app had stopped and I re-started it and I can imagine that is when pictures were not saved as they should have been. I'm going to experiment a bit and see if I can recreate the situation.

Just a reminder to me to not leave the camera at home when going away overnight and to not depend on the phone as a reliable picture source.

Thanks for the help!

 

[clee01l]

What I suspect is that some of the times after the phone screen timed out, the camera app had stopped and I re-started it and I can imagine that is when pictures were not saved as they should have been. I'm going to experiment a bit and see if I can recreate the situation.

If you import using Lightroom Mobile, the images will sync automatically to the cloud. If the Phone is shut down before the Lightroom images are synced to the cloud, the unsynced images will be retained in Lightroom Mobile and sync will resume the next time Lightroom mobile is restarted.
I asked you previously to report whether the imported images still show up in the "All Photos" Album or "Recent Photos" Album of Lightroom Mobile. I would still like an answer. If you don't see the images in "All Photos" Album or "Recent Photos" Album, then they never made it to Lightroom Mobile.

 

[SaraLH]

The missing photos are nowhere to be found on the phone, neither in Lightroom Mobile ("All Photos", "Recent Photos" or anywhere else) or in the phone's default gallery or Google Photos and were not synced to the Cloud or to Classic (I have a sync folder for cell pictures). I have checked in all possible folders, on the phone itself and with the phone linkled to the computer. The photos are gone, poof, never existed.

Thanks again for your help.

 

[Ken @ Canadian Rockies]

have checked in all possible folders, on the phone itself and with the phone linkled to the computer. The photos are gone, poof, never existed.

I just have to ask. Have you looked inside strange named Folders on your Internal Storage? One that is called DCIM? On your Mobile Phone...

 

[johnbeardy]

What happens when you tap the little cloud icon at the top right of LrMobile? Does it tell you anything?

 

[SaraLH]

Hi John & Ken, thanks for answering.

What happens when you tap the little cloud icon at the top right of LrMobile? Does it tell you anything?

The cloud icon tells me that I am synced and backed up.

I just have to ask. Have you looked inside strange named Folders on your Internal Storage? One that is called DCIM? On your Mobile Phone...

I looked inside of every possible folder on my Internal Storage - using the phone's file manager as well as hooked up to the computer and browsing with Windows Explorer.

 

[Ken @ Canadian Rockies]

By chance SaraLH, do you have a software installed on your phone that might be Backing photos up to SAVE room? And they are being moved to a different cloud drive? Google, One Drive, or other app? A long shot I know...

 

[SaraLH]

Ahh, I see where you're going... yes, the photos do get backed up to Google Photos, but the missing photos are not there, either. just the same ones that are in Lightroom. What I strongly suspect is that the loss had to do with the way the camera was started each time the screen timed out. I noticed that some of the times I was in lightroom and started the camera using the button within the program and other times LR had closed and I used the shortcut on my phone's home screen. I reckon that using one of these methods caused the camera to not save the photos.

 

[Ken @ Canadian Rockies]

Well, if that ended up being true, that might be the first time I've ever heard of that type of App error. That is a bummer for sure. I hope you get your future shots working more safer.

SaraLH, you said you have a phone with 500GB storage. So - I'm guessing you must have loads of room left. Well, we tried.,

 

[johnbeardy]

Well, if that ended up being true, that might be the first time I've ever heard of that type of App error.

In this sort of case, I usually expect they will be somewhere.
As mentioned in post #5, have you checked the Deleted folder in your web browser?

 

[SaraLH]

In this sort of case, I usually expect they will be somewhere.
As mentioned in post #5, have you checked the Deleted folder in your web browser?

Yep, I have checked everywhere. I just checked again - hooked the phone up to the pc and did a wildcard search for *.dng files and then checked through all image files. Not there anywhere. Not saved.

After 30 years in the IT business I can usually find presumably lost files. What experience, though, has taught me is that I there is often a new kind of error lurking around the corner. Sometimes explanable, sometimes not.

Thank you both so much for your time and tips!

 

[Codebreaker]

A bit late in the day and perhas academic now but on my andriod phone the imported images or those taken by the LR camera are stored somewhere like this. As you can see I've got it set to the SD card but its basically the same path if you don't use the SD card.

SD card\Android\data\com.adobe.lrmobile\files\carouselDocuments\70bf3c9cc61643f18f0ac8a1065d9aaa\Originals\2023\2023-03\2023-03-20

I've had other apps that have failed to record images mostly due to closing the app down too soon or even switching to another app.