Lost my keywords

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Roy

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Hi,

I have encountered some difficulties when moving my library from two external disks to an internal. I cut all my images from my two older disks and pasted them onto my new one using. When I opened LR of course the folderlist showed only ?? due to the lack of the files. What I then did might have given me a lot of work. I deleted the folderlist and importet the new folder from my new disk. Now there are no keywords on my image files.

No, I don't have a proper back-up!! :oops:

Does anyone have a smart solution to my time consuming problem?

Thanks!
 
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OK, no backups - nuff said.

Talking about backups, do you mean of the image files and /or the catalog?
Have you ever let LR create a backup (of the catalog)?

Can you confirm these:
All your images are on the external drive.
You deleted the folder tree in LR.
Then you did a reimport from the external drive.
 
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I don't have a backup of the catalog. At least I didn't. Now I do, but to late.

- All my images were on external drive
- The folder tree was deleted
- Then I did a reimport from the internal drive.

Roy
 
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If the catalog had been backed up or had not been wiped then you could have right clicked the top of the folder tree and "pointed it" at the new files.

I suppose you could go looking for deleted catalogues?

How many images are you talking about?
 
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Just what I was thinking... don't suppose your deleted catalog's in the recycle bin, is it?
 
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I know how it should be done. I just didn't know yesterday...

There is nothing in the recycle bin.

I guess it means I have to keyword 39 ''' images all over! Luckely I have a very good hierarchy.

Thanks!
 
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Aaaaw, Roy, what a shame!

Ok, for future reference, definitely back up your catalog regularly, and once you've finished keywording, you could also select all in Grid view and press Ctrl-S to write back to the files themselves too.
 
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Roy is a friend of mine, and its bad to here that he must to do all that key wording again. I started to think of something, DNG. If these files was DNG files, then all the info should be in each file, right. And in this case Roy would not loose he's keyword.
So "whatever" you do wrong, the info stays inside the file. If this is how it work, i think it is time to think about doing just that, making DNG of all my files.
 
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DNG isn't the issue here Kai - whatever file format, if he'd done the ctrl-s trick, it would have been either in the file (jpeg/tiff/psd/dng) or as a sidecar file (raw). The other alternative is to turn on 'autowrite to xmp', which would have done the same job.

Even if the files had been DNG, it still wouldn't have been updated unless the ctrl-S or autowrite had written back to the files.

So sorry Roy!
 
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Thanks for your answer Victoria, it takes some time to get used to all the terms in Lightroom. I didn't now that Lightroom was writing the keywords into the raw file, but you have to turn on 'autowrite to xmp' or do the "ctr s" trick to make it work, am i right? I thought Lightroom stored the keyword in the catalog and the sidecar file, and the sidecar file was only useful when i open the file in Bridge ore Photoshop? I am learning something new every day:)
 
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After my post i just had to put peace to my mind. And i was right, Lightroom don't write any info to the raw file. It write the info in to the catalog, and if you want to, you could add that info to the sidecar file, by doing the 'autowrite to xmp' or do the "ctr s"
If you dont do anything the info stays in the catalog, and if you delete one file, you also delete the keyword in the catalog. In that case your keyword is lost.
But if you ad the keyword to your DNG file, and then have a backup taken after your keywording, you will have your keyword in the backup of the DNG file.
If i use 'autowrite to xmp' and i have DNG files, i think this will go faster than writing sidecar files? It sounds much easear to do this, insted of messing with sidecar files.
 
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Answering your own questions Kai... I like it!

Yes you're right in everything you've said, and writing to DNG goes about the same speed as writing to sidecar files.
 
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According to my reading of Martin Evening (page 179 ff. in his Lr 2 book), switching on "Automatically write changes into XMP" when the catalog setting "Include Develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files" is also switched on can cause a potential problem in that Bridge and Photoshop will default to opening these non-raw files in Camera Raw rather than open them directly in Photoshop.

His recommendation is that "Include Develop settings in metadata inside JPEG, TIFF, and PSD files" be switched off if one has made develop changes to JPEG, TIFF, or PSD files and "Automatically write changes into XMP" is enabled.

Does that make sense?
 
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There's now a switch in CS3 and CS4 which can also stop ACR opening those jpegs, even if they've got Develop settings. The setting was put into LR because there wasn't originally a switch in CS3, but it's pretty much redundant now.
 
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fotojensen;3381' said:
... and if you delete one file, you also delete the keyword in the catalog. In that case your keyword is lost.
Click to expand...
Let's say I have 4 files with the keyword water attached to them. If I delete one of them does that keyword disappear from my list and the other 3 files no longer have a keyword? What if I have only one file with a keyword. Does deleting that file delete the keyword from the list?
 
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No, and No.

You can have empty keywords. To delete a keyword from Lr's keyword list, you have to explicitly delete it (or its parent(s) if its in a hierarchy.)
 
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