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"lost " images

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Peter Kaplan

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Jan 17, 2009
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Location
Hudson Valley, NY
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Intermediate
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I recently bought a portable hard drive and have Time Machine on my Mac. I backed up all my LR files on both storage drives. I thought I had backed up all of those images, but have now found out that as many as 100 images I believe were not backed up successfully. I am able to see those images in LR in my catalogs but only as "missing or not online" images. When I try to locate them the serial numbers for those images cannot be found. As I have been led to believe that LR handles images and is non destructive, I was hoping the images were stored somewhere I had not thought of. So my question is, is their any way to retrieve those pictures or are they lost forever? Any help would be most appreciated
 
Did Time Machine make backups of your images?

On Windows machines, there are "undelete utilities" that can recover deleted files in certain situations. I assume similar things exist on Mac computer. I suggest you download such a program and then see if it can find your photos. If you are going to do this, do not perform any other activities on your computer ... the only thing you should do is download this program, install it and run it.

Lightroom is non-destructive, but if your photos are missing, that's because something happened outside of Lightroom.
 
Adding to Paige's post, if the 100 images are truly lost and cannot be recovered, you could use the LRViewer utility which can create a jpeg from the LR previews of the missing files. Depending on the quality/size settings of your previews, this may offer a 'better than nothing' solution. See http://basepath.com/ImageIngester/LRViewer-info.php
 
"lost"

Thanks alll for your replies. Where or how do I find LightroomViewer Utility?
That sounds like the best option at this point. I am also gonna try Data Recovery.
 
I need to get something straight in my mind as to what is happening to my LR folders. After trying to locate and upload some of the 100 or so pictures that were offline, I now see other folders that seem to have the same problem. They are all offline. I know these pictures were backed up and I know that they were ok a few days days ago and maybe even yesterday. It feels like a virus or something is making folders seem offline when they are NOT. I've had some success with LR viewer and thanks for that, but this is a bigger problem. Anyone have any thoughts on this?
 
2 very common causes for this:

1. Moving files or folders with tools external to Lr. (Lr is a database, not a browser, it doesn't do 'hot reads' of your disks to stay upated)
2. I see you're on Mac, so this probably doesn't apply, but Windows likes to change drive letters when you're not looking, which confuses Lr, see above. I don't know if there's an analagous problem with Mac.

The 'offline' status implies that the linkage between Lr's perception of where the files are supposed to be, and their current actual location is broken. The problem is rarely in Lr. I'm still not sure exactly how you believe Time Machine and backups are involved in this. Can you elaborate a little more on exactly the steps you took to arrive in this situation?
 
I would prefer if you continued the conversation here in the forums so we can all benefit from the answer(s). You can attach your photos here.
 
Brad- I was not sure you could attach images to this post. So I'll try to do them now/Users/peterkaplan/Desktop/Biosphere Locate.tiff/Users/peterkaplan/Desktop/Biosphere.tiff/Users/peterkaplan/Desktop/Biosphere Jpegs.tiff
So- when you open Biosphere you will see all of those images are offline. Why is that? I have not changed any of them in any way that I remember. When you open locate you see the path but again, I did not do anything that I remember. And finally opening jpeg you see Multiple copies of almost all the selected Jpeg. ???????
 
Peter, in order to attach the screen shots to your post, you need to choose the 'Go Advanced' button just below right of the Quick Reply text entry box. In the resulting editing screen, you will see a section called Manage Attachments, use that to add your screen shots. Note that there is a restriction on the file sizes you can attach (not sure what it is on this new forum) and the acceptable file types, TIFF is not one of the possible choices.
 
Time Machine can be used to restore images that have been accidentally deleted. It has nothing to do with the actual LR issue we are seeing here as far as I can see. Once we get a location for the images we may see what the issue is.

If you press Shift-Command-4 you can then drag the cursor out on the screen (like a crop tool) and capture part of it as a png file on your desktop. The png can be attached to the forum post.


Are you importing your images directly into LR or are you copying them somewhere first and then adding them to the catalog ?
 
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Lost images

/Users/peterkaplan/Desktop/Biosphere.jpg/Users/peterkaplan/Desktop/Biosphere Jpegs.jpg/Users/peterkaplan/Desktop/Biosphere Locate.jpg

Hope this is right......
 
So you are importing your images to the desktop ? I wouldn't think would be a good place to store them. Are you importing your images directly into LR or are you copying them somewhere first and then adding them to the catalog ?

A screen shot would help us out. Including a step by step of what you do to get the image from the camera and into LR.

Your last post is just a line of text, it doesn't link to anything. You need to upload a screen shot as described by Brad earlier.

I have a feeling you may have just misunderstood what "import" means in LR terms which is a common mistake.
 
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No, you are not attaching screen shots, just putting text links to a file on your desktop which no one will have access to.
 
Not sure why you are having trouble posting screenshots, however here's how using the Quick Reply box at the bottom of the thread...

When using the Quick Reply, look at the series of icons at the top left of the box as per this screenshot:

Capture1.JPG

Note the icon that I've red-boxed....this is the Insert Image icon. Click on that when you are ready to insert the image and the following dialog box appears:

Capture2.JPG

Click on Select Files and a File Browser window appears, use this to find the screenshot you want to upload and click Open. The filename you have chosen will then appear in the Add Image box, and additional options will appear, like so:

Capture3.JPG

You can continue to Select Files, or when you are ready simply click on Upload Files and the screenshot(s) will then appear in the Quick Reply box ready for you to submit the post. It's as simple as that.
 
Here are 2 of the lost slides

FYI...see attached.
 

Attachments

  • Biosphere Locate.jpg
    Biosphere Locate.jpg
    251.5 KB · Views: 154
  • Biosphere Jpegs.jpg
    Biosphere Jpegs.jpg
    232.6 KB · Views: 154
I can see the screen shots now.

I'm a little concerned that your path contains a reference to a backup, was this created with Time Machine ? are you referencing your images in Lightroom from a time machine backup ?

Are you importing your images directly into LR or are you copying them somewhere first and then adding them to the catalog ? Please tell us step-by-step your exact import process.
 
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Here is my process as best I remember....
I input my pictures into LR from my digital camera. I see all the pictures in the LR library total (lets say I added 50 pictures)
Now my unedited pictures are now ready to edit. I either edit them in my main library or I select those I want to keep and create a folder and add them to it.
Lets say the new folder is called Max . So now I have 50 pictures of Max in the Max folder. I open Max and edit the way I want and save to the Max folder.Thats it. So now if you look at the first screen shot, you will see the folder called Biosphere and init all the photos are offline. That is not right. I have not edited any of them. If we can figure out why all these shots are offline we will have this problem licked. That is the issue here. Also note that when I try to locate an image and I can find it, it usually has 4-5 copies of the same picture, which is also not right....
 
I would like to add some other information about this problem. I have noticed that when I select "open recent" I found quite a number of files which I will copy for you. I was under the impression that I upgraded to 3.3 and yet I still have older LR 2 files. The number indicates how many pictures in each file. This is obviously wrong but untill I understand whats going on, I don't want to delete any of them (by the way, how do you do that? ) So here goes:
13,148 LR 2 Catalog-2.lrcat-users/peterkaplan/pictures/maincatalog
8313 LR3 same as above
test no images
9967 LR2 Catalog 2 same as above /backups/2010-11-10 2034
Seldom used photos 2.lrcat
8313 LR3 Catalog "" "" Volumes/owc on the go SATA Pictures/Main Catalog
4331 LR3 " " peterkaplan/pictures/LR/backup (no images only place holders with ? marks
384 Art Catalog Database -3.lrcat
497 " " 2lrcat most all are offline
284NDPRESO.lrcat all pictures seem ok here
8313 LR2 most all offline
384 Art Catalog Database no images all offline placeholder previews
877 Seldom used photos/lrcat seems ok
It seems only the first LR2 cat with 13,000 pictures is main catalog , but why is it LR 2?
 
Make sure you are not moving any images around using Finder, you must only use Lightroom. When you create the folders and move images how are you doing that ?

It looks like you have several catalogs, I don't know why you have chosen that route but generally it is far easier to have a single catalogue with all your images to avoid any confusion. The catalog names do not reflect their actual version.

You seem to be looking at backup catalogs too, you aren't using these by accident are you ?

To be honest I don't know where to start as it looks like you have a real mess on your hands there and it would take forever to try and fix that via a forum like this. If I were you I would find someone that understands LR well and get them to sit in front of your machine and sort it all out into a single catalog.
 
Hi Peter, did you see my last update ? Did you create the separate catalogs on purpose ?
Also have you moved any images outside of Lightroom with Finder ?

I *think* what you need is a single catalog with all the images to make it simple to look after.

I don't have a lot of time at the moment so I'll ask if any of the Guru's can help out.
 
Thanks for your input. I really appreciate it. I am now in contact with Victoria (The LR Queen) and we are now doping this out. But any help is always appreciated. One thing for sure is that so much of my library is compromised (offline) that at this point we are trying to figure out if another software may have appropriated all these pictures and put them in a place which we cannot find (at the moment) I've sent Victoria a list of all my software. It seems incredible that about 1/3 of my library is now offline but somehow is hidden from view. If you have any ideas, I'm all ears. Thanks again.
 
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