Lightroom has forgotten my imports.

[Penpal]

I opened up lightroom (2.4) today to check over the photos I did for a shoot that was two weeks ago, but looking down my left hand pane, the date wasn't there. The images, according to lightroom, haven't even been imported. But I did import them, and make a bunch of edits, two weeks ago... and every image I've uploaded and edited since then (quite a few) have also "not" been imported. This is incredibly frustrating, and it's the latest version of my catalog... What can I do? I don't know what to do at all. I've tried closing down lightroom, creating a new catalog and loading the old one, but nothing. All of my edits have vanished.

Why? I took my laptop off of my external HDD today, but I've done that before without this happening. Is there a way I can get my edits back, or is it a lost cause?

This sucks.

 

[Brad Snyder]

OK. the first lrcat on your list is the actual working catalog file, the remaining 4 are Lr autobackups (the backup which runs at Lr startup), which should be stored in folders named in a format like 2''x-xx-xx-xxxx, which represents date and time of backup. If you haven't changed any of the defaults, they should be in a folder named Backups in the /Pictures/Lightroom folder. Note that the working catalog, and the first backup file were both opened this morning. The remaining backup files seem to be recently undisturbed.

There are also two Most Recently Used Windows shortcut links, which are probably associated with the Windows Start Menu, and two 'ReadMe' files in French and German.

Confusion can sometimes arise, because the backups are literally identical copies of the working catalog. No magic, no special coding, no nothing, just copies. So if by accident one of those backup catalogs gets opened, *AND* you have your preferences set to always open the last catalog used, you can end up using the wrong catalog. Meanwhile you think you're using the correct catalog, and the work gets done in the wrong place, and then stuff just gets all confused.

That may not be exactly what's going on here, with your problem, but this particular 'gotcha' bites a lot of folks. Personally, I've just moved to a new computer, did some catalog consolidation, and struggled with a corruption problem, and almost got caught in this same trap a couple of times.

 

[Kiwigeoff]

Thanks Denis for the eye opener!!
Now the top one is your catalog and the others (except for the 2 shortcuts) are back-ups. You can tell this by the fact they are in folders with dates.I would move all the backups into a folder called Lightroom Backups and if you can move them to an external drive.Next you can set LR to make future back ups into that folder, you do that next time LR asks if you want to back up, just follow the menu in the dialog box.Now is the top catalog the one that has everything in it?
As for the flower icons, someone who is a PC person will have to answer that.

 

[Mark Sirota]

[quote author=Brad Snyder link=topic=7419.msg5'841#msg5'841 date=1249332662]
Robin, to link an image from Flickr, log into your photostream, view the actual image, above the image click on "All Sizes", choose the size you want, then below the image, find the URL box to cut and past the direct image link.

It will look something like this: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2432/37'16'5833_3c44519b3e_o.jpg

Paste that in your message, and it will enable folks to click on it to see it at flickr. Or, click on the inline image button, far left of the second line in the preview post editor, and then paste the flickr url in the box for inline viewing ...
[/quote]

Unfortunately, doing this is a violation of Flickr's terms of service. You have to link to the photo's page so that you can click on the image and get to the Flickr page. You can't just inline the image. So you also need to grab the URL of the photo's page and include that:



This is a multi-step process in this forum, since it doesn't use straight HTML. First, click the Hyperlink button (second from left) and enter the URL of the photo's page. Then highlight that, press the Image button (leftmost button) and enter the URL of the photo itself.

 

[Brad Snyder]

Wow, I didn't know that about the no direct in-lining, Mark, thanks. I'm sure I read the how-to instructions somewhere on Flickr, but now it occurs to me they're probably for linking in Flickr's discussion groups.

 

[rzarbo]

Thanks, guys, for all your help! I now understand WHAT happened but I am still uncertain WHY. It is pretty obvious that I am not a very computer savvy person (LOL) and I do not go looking around my hard drive very often. I know I had not been looking in my hd in the time period right before I ended up in the wrong catalog so how did LR end up opening into a backup catalog when I hadn't opened a backup catalog to make it the last catalog opened? :-\ And , if I had been operating in a backup catalog for the week I thought my photos were missing, how did it revert back to the main catalog?

And what is with these flower icons denoting missing photos?


Sorry about the flickr thing. I won't try that again.

Thanks again for your help and patience.

 

[Denis Pagé]

[quote author=Brad Snyder link=topic=7419.msg51'51#msg51'51 date=1249516841]
...but now it occurs to me they're probably for linking in Flickr's discussion groups.
[/quote]
OT but "Apparte"

No Brad, I think that as long as you stay on their servers, you can link as you wish; This not having read Flicks' rules.

Back in 1994 on my website on astronomical imaging we had rules well written at the bottom of each page asking not to link directly by embedding. The idea was/is not having to pay the bandwidth for the others.

Will write the rest to the Lightroom Forums Administrative discussion...

Sorry for this "apparte"