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Lightroom failing to import some photos from a card

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goon525

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Jul 17, 2012
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41
Lightroom Experience
Advanced
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
LR CC Classic 8.2.1
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
Our LR Classic CC (on an up-to-date iMac) has started behaving oddly on import. A few weeks ago, we found that it had only imported about half of my wife's images on a card (we always format cards between sessions), but on putting it in again it found some of the missing ones, and then, repeating the exercise, some more. We suspected a dodgy SD card. But I've just come back from a birding trip to Trinidad with 1600 images - unusually for me, I'd chosen just JPEG rather than my usual RAW+JPEG. On inserting the SD card into the iMac, it downloaded about 900 of them. So I removed and reinserted the card again - another 150 or so. And so on. I guess I'll get there in the end, but I've lost confidence in LR to import thoroughly. Is this a known bug?
 
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Hmmm. Try something for me? When you import, the card may show twice in the dialog, once at the top in the Devices section and again further down as a hard drive. Which do you usually use? And if you switch to the other, does that get all of them?
 
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Thanks for responding, Victoria. It does show twice as you suggest. But I've now bled the card dry. so will have to wait until I've taken some more photos to compare the two. I'll report back later. (Past experience is that I don't have to choose between them, and hadn't noticed that there were two ways. The images just appear in the main part of the Import screen.)
 
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I've now been able to test this with my wife's card, Victoria. And you're on to something. With the default setting, which chooses Devices, it only found 3 new images. But if I chose Files down below from the hard drive, there were 73 - which I'm pretty sure was everything. So very well done for identifying my short term fix, but I wonder if I'm the only one suffering from this LR problem - and whether others are losing images they haven't realised have failed to download?
 
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Everyone has their own preferred workflow and I'm not saying that one is better than another.
I prefer to use the OS to copy files from the card. I drag the whole folder from the card reader into the parent folder where I keep raw images (for me, the parent is usually the year, though if I have multiple cameras, I create sub-folders for each camera used at the same event). I rename the folder just created with an incrementing six digit serial number (so name is now unique) followed by a shortish description. Then with LR in library mode, I drag the whole folder into the LR window. I then rename the folder on the card to include the date I copied it to the computer (ie, a unique name, the camera will start a new folder). My backup scripts will find the new folder(s) and make sure copies are taken in various directions. When the card is ready to be re-used, it gets formatted. I won't format it until the backups have run. Ie, once copied from the card I always have at least two copies of the files.
I'm using LR6 still. This workflow has not caused me a glitch at any time.
 
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Well my workflow had not caused any glitches until recent weeks. I don't really want to tun anything as complicated as you suggest, LRList001 (though I appreciate the suggestion). I just want LR to do what it's supposed to do! It seems from the PS Family forum Victoria directed me to above that quite a lot of people are suffering from the same issue. So it's certainly not fixed. In the meantime, the workaround Victoria suggests above seems to overcome the problem, so that's what I'll use.
 
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